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Vital 
American Problems 

An 

Attempt to Solve 

The "Trust," "Labor," and "Negro" 

Problems 



By 

Harry Earl Montgomery 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Zbe ftnfcfeerbocker ptees 
1908 






1 (a 
2_ I (3 O °\ 1 



Copyright, 1908 

BY 

HARRY EARL MONTGOMERY 



Uhc Imtcfeerbochcr prees, Hew JtJorfc 



CONTENTS 



^USl 


? PROBLEM: 




I. 


The Problem 


3 


II. 


State or Federal Control . 


• i9 


III. 


The Solution: 






Bureau of Corporations 


• 45 




Incorporation Tax . 


• 5i 




Liability of Stockholders and 






Directors 


53 




Prospectus or Advertisement 


54 




Annual Report 


57 




Annual Examination 


61 




Property Taxed Locally 


69 




Tax on Profits 


70 




Valuation of Assets . 


74 




Actions . 


74 




Departmental Expenses . 


74 


IV. 
*EIG 


Feasibility of Plan . 
rHT-RATE PROBLEM . 


76 
93 



iv Contents 

PAGE 

GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP: 

I. The Problem .... 109 

II. The Solution: 

State Corporation Department . 133 
Tax on Charters . . .134 
Property Tax . . . .134 
Duties and Powers of Superin- 
tendent . . . -135 
Graduated Profit Tax . . 136 
Ten- Year Averaging . . 137 

LABOR PROBLEM: 

I. The Problem . . . .143 



II. The Solution (Plan I) 


• 165 


(Plan II) 


. 172 


NEGRO PROBLEM: 




I. The Problem 


• 205 


II. The Solution: 




Education: 




a. Universal Education . 


. 214 


b. Elementary Schools . 


229 


c. Colleges 


• 238 


d. Manual Training 


• 244 



INDEX 



Contents 


V 




PAGE 


e. Manual Training for Girls . 


266 


/. Religion (Religious Influence) 


277 


(Religious Education) 


286 


(Churches) 


302 


Ideals ..... 


315 


Politics ..... 


3 2 4 


Social Equality 


336 


Federal Aid .... 


348 


Conclusion .... 


356 


• • . • • • • 


363 



THE "TRUST" PROBLEM 



THE PROBLEM 

THE discussion of the "Trust" problem during 
the past fifteen years has brought this 
subject through the hysterical, demagogical, and 
denunciatory period on to that stage of develop- 
ment where calm, sane, and deliberate judgment 
prevails. Facts regarding the organization and 
management of " trusts' ' and their effect upon 
the industrial and commercial life of the American 
nation have been gathered, tabulated, studied, 
and digested until the mists of uncertainty and 
the clouds of ignorance have vanished, leaving 
these combinations of capital standing forth in 
the bright light of a perfect knowledge, with their 
forms, effects, and tendencies fully known. 

The origin and development of "trusts" and 
their valuable features and evil tendencies may 
be summarized as follows: 

The principle of co-operation is a fundamental 
law of society. It has its birth in man's instinct 
for self-protection and self-preservation; and in 
the earliest stages of social development took the 
form of village communities, clans, tribes, and 

3 



4 Vital American Problems 

nations. Step by step in the progress of civili- 
zation this spirit of association has been developing 
in the social and political life and in the industrial 
and commercial world. 

Although slower in its development than the 
social and political movements, the industrial 
evolution has been going on, steadily and per- 
sistently, through various forms of organization, 
until our age is confronted with vast combinations 
of tremendous and far-reaching power. This 
movement has developed from the individual in 
business to the partnership, from the partnership 
to the small corporation, from the small corpora- 
tion to the pool, from the pool to the trust, and 
from the trust to the giant corporation. 

The giant corporation is the latest phase in the 
growth of the principle of co-operation and is 
solely the result of the evolution of industrial 
progress amid certain well-known natural economic 
conditions and is not in any sense an excrescence 
on the commercial and industrial body politic. 

Every sensible man favors the existence of 
corporations, for the reason that individual 
citizens cannot provide sufficient capital to 
develop the resources of our country. Vast sums 
of money are required to inaugurate and carry 
through great undertakings. And what one man 
cannot do for lack of means, several may ac- 
complish by uniting the capital which each can 
command. To utilize the forces of steam and elec- 



The " Trust" Problem 5 

tricity in this growing country, and to handle the 
gigantic business operations of the present day, 
individuals have been forced to co-operate and to 
take advantage of the corporation laws. Our 
present economic system could not exist, our 
grasp of the markets of the world could not be 
held, were it not for corporate life. 

The corporation, great or small, is organized to 
enable men, as a collective body, to do what each 
member may do as an individual. The right to 
combine, when the object of the combination is 
the general good, is recognized by Federal and 
State law, and has not been successfully ques- 
tioned by any recognized student of economics. 

The giant corporation, compactly organized, 
honestly financed, and rightfully managed, through 
the elimination of the unnecessary duplication of 
plants, of the reduplication of administrative 
machinery, and of the competitive struggle for 
the control of the market, will prevent waste, 
will reduce the costs of production, will furnish 
steady employment at an increased wage to the 
employees, will do away with child labor and the 
sweat-shop, will lower the prices of the finished 
products , will open new markets and will 
bring within the reach of the masses, at the cheap- 
est price, kinds and quantities of goods unob- 
tainable before the existence of these aggregations 
of capital. Furthermore, such a corporation, 
through its control of the market, will be en- 



6 Vital American Problems 

abled to manufacture intelligently with reference 
to the probable demand, thereby lessening the 
danger of 4< over-production/' and furnishing a 
safe-guard against the financial difficulties which 
have periodically plagued the world. It will, 
likewise prove a tremendous instrument in ad- 
vancing economic progress, not only on account 
of the superior efficiency of unified control, but 
especially because of its power to enlist for in- 
dustrial purposes the largest possible share of 
the accumulated wealth of the people. 

Despite these advantages accruing to the public 
from the large combinations of capital, there are 
dangerous elements existing in the giant corpora- 
tions and positive evils emanating from them. 

FIRST AND FOREMOST AMONG THE EVILS EXISTING 
IN CORPORATE LIFE TO-DAY, IS THE PRACTICE OF 
CAPITALIZING MERGED INDUSTRIES IN EXCESS OF 
THEIR ACTUAL VALUE. 

Over-capitalization does not mean large capital- 
ization or capitalization based on the amount 
necessary to finance large undertakings. Rather, 
it is the imposition upon an undertaking of a 
liability without a corresponding asset to meet it. 

In the United States, the amount of the capital- 
ization of corporations and the value of their net 
are in a large majority of cases entirely 
unrelated. Most of the large industrial corpo- 



The " Trust" Problem 7 

rations have issued bonds and preferred stock to 
an amount equal to the value of the combined 
properties as active concerns, and an equal or 
greater amount of common stock to represent 
the good-will and the prospective savings to be 
gained as a result of the combination. 

From the reports of thirty-nine of the large 
corporations to the Industrial Commission in 1900, 
it was learned that the average value of the 
property owned by these corporations was only 
64.42 per cent, of their nominal capitalization. 

Mr. Wharton Baker in an able review of the 
organization of railroad corporations makes this 
statement : 

"And now let us take up the vital question of over- 
capitalization of railroad corporations, — vital, because 
the railroads take from the people each year for divi- 
dends on fictitious capital the great sum of $350,000,- 
000, a tax of about four dollars upon every man, 
woman, and child in our country. . . . The present 
capitalization of our railroads is in the aggregate 
about $13,800,000,000. The cost of these railroads, 
with all the changes of line, roadbed, and equipment 
properly chargeable to capital accounts, does not 
exceed $6,000,000,000; so we have in the capitaliza- 
tion of our railroads almost $8,000,000,000 of fictitious 
capital/ ' 1 

Mr. James J. Hill has well summed up the 
situation in the declaration that very many com- 

1 North American Review, Oct. 19, 1906. 



8 Vital American Problems 

binations had been created "not for the purpose 
of manufacturing any public commodity in the 
first place, but for the purpose of selling sheaves 
of printed securities, which represent nothing 
more than good-will and prospective profits to 
the promoters/ ' 

This fictitious or speculative capitalization is a 
fraud upon those who contribute the real capital 
to the undertaking, either originally or by subse- 
quent purchase, for the financial management, 
in order to keep up the value of the inflated and 
speculative stock which is very largely held by 
the promoters and those associated with them in 
the control of the corporation — stock given to 
them in payment for services rendered, — fre- 
quently conceals the true condition of the cor- 
poration and the relation of the profits earned to 
the actual capital invested, and uses the surplus 
to pay dividends or creates a floating debt to 
carry on the business. Further, it is a public 
evil because the combination, in order that a 
fair return may be made on its bonds and stock, 
is often obliged to cut down the wages of its 
employees and to charge too high prices for its 
product. 

A MONOPOLY SECURED TO CORPORATIONS BY 
REASON OF THE OWNERSHIP OR CONTROL OF ONE OR 
MORE LINES OF INDUSTRY, OR OF THE SUPPLY OF 
RAW MATERIALS, IS A GRAVE DANGER. 






The "Trust" Problem 9 

A complete monopoly, except under a special 
government franchise, is an unknown condition 
in the United States. A practical monopoly, 
however, has been obtained by many combinations 
over several natural products and lines of industry. 

Though many of the giant corporations, by 
reason of having merged in their combination 
practically all the factories engaged in a particular 
line of business, have power to fix the prices 
arbitrarily for the product they control, but few 
have dared to use their power to any great extent. 

The production of wealth in the United States 
is increasing so rapidly that its owners are per- 
sistently seeking new fields for investment and the 
difficulty is daily becoming greater to find employ- 
ment for capital even at nominal returns. It is a 
well-known fact that a great amount of idle 
capital exists in the hands of enterprising men 
who stand ready to enter any specific field of 
production whenever the profits offer a suffi- 
cient inducement. A case in point is that of the 
American Sugar Refining Company. This com- 
pany, by charging exorbitant prices, brought 
upon itself the ruinous competition of Claus 
Spreckles, and its promising life ended in disaster. 
When the prospect of making large profits is 
presented, another combination is formed and 
competition ensues on a scale and operates with 
an intensity far beyond anything that is otherwise 
possible, with the inevitable result that the 



io Vital American Problems 

profits become reduced to a minimum and the 
weaker competitor is compelled to sell out to 
the stronger, or to go out of business. 

This competition need not be direct, however, 
for the fear of competition operates to a certain 
extent almost as effectively as the competition 
itself. But this form of latent competition has not 
proved an adequate regulator of prices for various 
well-understood causes. 

The corporate managements are aware that the 
potential competitor is often tardy in his action for 
the following reasons : that he realizes that he will 
encounter many obstacles when he seeks to become 
an active competitor; that grave difficulties and 
dangers lie in his path; that nearly all the large 
corporations own factories or mills having a 
capacity in excess of the consuming power of the 
public; that the power of the giant corporation 
over the avenues of trade is reasonably secure; 
that losses incident to mistakes due to inexperience 
might prove ruinous, and that he will not have a 
fair chance for life when he enters the business 
arena. Further, considerable time must elapse 
between the organization of a competitive enter- 
prise and the completion of the manufacturing 
plant, and the capitalist very often finds it more 
profitable to buy an interest in the money-making 
corporation than to start as a competitor with the 
risks attendant on winning a foothold. This delay 
on the part of the potential competitor to become 



The " Trust " Problem n 

an actual competitor so lessens the fear of com- 
petition that it fails to provide a proper and 
complete check on the tendency of the corporation 
to raise prices, and it goes no further than to 
obviate the most flagrant abuse of power. 

Another partial check to the abuse of power 
lies in the fact that there are on the market sub- 
stitutes for nearly all articles of commerce which 
would be used exclusively if a cheaper price were 
made as an inducement. There are few, if any, 
among the commodities on which we depend 
for food, shelter, and clothing which the people 
would not dispense with if prices rose too high. 
Professor Giddings has well expressed this human 
trait in the following statement: 

" When one group of producers demands unusually 
high prices, all other groups of producers can very 
considerably increase their sales in virtue of that 
law of human nature according to which men can 
and do, to a great extent, substitute one group of 
conveniences and pleasures for another, and distri- 
bute their expenditures at all times in such a way as 
to obtain the greatest satisfaction for a given outlay." 

The incessant competition carried on by the 
producers of different commodities which claim 
to satisfy some particular class of need cannot 
be done away with by the monopoly of any one of 
them. This is probably the chief explanation of 
the comparatively low prices charged by the 



12 Vital American Problems 

Standard Oil Company. As an illuminant, oil is 
competing with gas, candles, and electricity, 
and unless the Standard Oil monopoly was ex- 
tended to include these and other possible illum- 
inants, the Company's prices could not, for any 
length of time, be determined by the pressure 
of the need for artificial light. 

For years, the Standard Oil Company, refining 
as it does eighty-five per cent, of the oil refined 
in the United States, has from day to day an- 
nounced the price at which it would buy crude 
oil and the price at which it would sell the refined ; 
and this price has almost invariably been the 
market price followed by its competitors. In 
like manner, the American Sugar Refining Com- 
pany, which sells ninety per cent, of the sugar 
output, posts its prices daily and these prices are 
generally followed by its rivals. 

Mr. Bryon W. Holt, of the New England Free 
Trade League, stated some years ago the following 
striking conclusion which may be considered as 
accurate to-day: 

4 'Out of the four hundred trusts which I have 
enumerated, I do not believe that ten have lowered 
prices. In fact, I know of none, except one or two, 
and these have depreciated the quality of their 
product. ... In nine cases out of ten, trusts have 
raised prices — often more than fifty per cent. ,, 

While it is true that since 1895 prices generally 



The " Trust' ' Problem 13 

have advanced as a result of business activity, 
great prosperity, and an increased demand from 
the public, yet the prices charged by the giant 
corporations have almost invariably been higher 
than the prices charged by small competitors. 

To avoid inviting competition, prices must be 
kept within reasonable limits. No monopoly, 
not founded on some exclusive governmental 
privilege, can long exist unless it is based upon 
superior excellence of the product, coupled with 
economy of manufacture and a reasonable charge 
to the public. There is, however, a considerable 
range within which corporations may raise prices 
without calling potential competition into positive 
activity; and most of the giant corporations in 
the United States are charging the public prices, 
which, while not so high as to invite competition 
or to provoke violent resistence from consumers, 
are yet so high as to operate as a direct and un- 
just tax upon the people which no government 
should permit to be levied. 

A MONOPOLY IN CERTAIN MATERIALS SECURED TO 
CORPORATIONS BY THE TARIFF ACT IS A WELL 
RECOGNIZED DANGER. 

It has been claimed that the tariff is the mother 
of monopolies, and that in order to destroy the 
monopolies, the tariff act must be repealed. The 
advocates of this remedy do not seem to realize 
that large combinations of capital exist in free- 



14 Vital American Problems 

trade England and in France and in Germany, 
and that the lowering or breaking down of the 
American tariff wall would have the following 
effect: (a) the wages of labor in America would 
be lowered to meet the wages of European work- 
ing men in order to keep the wheels of industry in 
this country from being stopped; (b) or if the 
American working men should refuse to consent to 
the reduction of their wages to the level of the 
wages paid to European working men, foreign 
"trusts" would be substituted for domestic 
"trusts" in the control of our markets, and 
idleness would be the lot of the American working 
men. The American union of capital might be 
destroyed, but with it would go down the 
American laborer. 

Moreover, the fact is often overlooked that 
there are large "trusts" in the United States 
whose products are not protected by the tariff. 

"Within a protected country, " asserts Mr. J. Law- 
rence Laughlin, "a given industry is open to any one 
having the capital and desire to enter it; domestic 
competition can be as keen in a protected as in a 
non-protected industry; and, consequently, fierce 
rivalry can lead to combination as well in industries 
protected by duties as in any others. " ! 

Whatever may be said about the wisdom of 
fencing our country about with a tariff wall, the 
fact remains that American industries have been 

1 Inlustrial America, p. 133. 






The "Trust* Problem 15 

built up under tariff protection and that many- 
lines of industry are, in a large measure, still 
dependent upon it. It is undoubtedly true that 
there are tariff rates which are excessive rather 
than protective and that several giant corporations 
are unduly favored. Such a condition must ne- 
cessarily arise as a result of the changing com- 
mercial and industrial conditions in our growing 
and expanding markets. But we cannot forget 
the depression in the business life and the paralysis 
that almost destroyed American industries in 
1893 as the result of the effort of Congress to 
change the schedule of tariff duties. 

Instead of destroying the mother, would it not 
be saner and more productive of prosperity to 
bring up and control the children so that they 
may become useful members of the business 
world? "The question of regulation of the trusts/ ' 
President Roosevelt has well said, "stands apart 
from the question of tariff re vision.' ' 

Hon. William J. Bryan, in considering the 
tariff as a weapon with which to control " trusts, " 
advocates the passage of "a law authorizing the 
admission, duty free, of articles entering into 
competition with the products of a convicted 
trust," and asserts that such a law "would act as a 
powerful deterrent to monopolistic combinations. " l 

While the existence of such a law as proposed by 
Mr. Bryan would undoubtedly "act as a powerful 

1 The Reader, May, 1907, p. 577. 



1 6 Vital American Problems 

deterrent to monopolistic combinations/ ' its execu- 
tion would be more productive of harm than of 
good. True, the "convicted trust," as a punish- 
ment for its wrong-doing, would be obliged to face 
foreign competition with all the attendant losses, 
but the infliction of the penalty would not stop 
there. It would be inflicted upon the innocent, 
independent, non-trust, American competitor 
with the same force and effect as it would be 
visited upon the criminal. The "trust," possessing 
resources larger than those of its American 
competitors, would be better able to withstand 
the competition of foreign rivals and while it 
might be crippled in its future business life, it 
might not be destroyed as would possibly be the 
case with its financially weaker home competitors. 
The proposed law would, in its execution, not only 
punish the guilty, but, at the same time, would 
bankrupt the innocent who should enjoy the 
protection of the government in their efforts to 
bring about competition with the " trust," thereby 
preventing the "trust" from charging exorbitant 
prices for its product. 

A TWOFOLD PROBLEM 

That a giant corporation has a "Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde" character, is now fully recognized, 
and the mission of the student of economics is to 
devise a plan which will preserve the good and 



The "Trust" Problem 17 

valuable features of corporate combination and at 
the same time eliminate the evils existing in cor- 
porate organization and corporate management. 

Every corporation or consolidation of corpo- 
rations into one corporate body is not a " trust." 
Every aggregation of capital is not a public 
danger. Corporations are no better and no worse 
than the individuals who manage them. Some 
corporations are honest, honorable, and law- 
abiding, and are entitled to the same protection, 
support, and encouragement of the laws that are 
given to the upright individual citizen. The 
corporate charter is only a cloak covering the 
men upon whom it rests. 

Would it be practicable to destroy corpora- 
tions, thereby closing the doors of ninety per 
cent, of our factories, turning out of employment 
thousands of men, tying up billions of capital, 
stopping production, creating high prices for the 
merchandise in existence, and bringing upon our 
country a panic, the severity and magnitude of 
which the world has never known? The giant 
corporation is the logical outcome of the industrial 
development of the world ; and, as such, it may be 
destroyed in form but not in essence. 

It is useless to make our laws more drastic and 
to try in that way to break up the great combi- 
nations now existing and to prevent the formation 
of others. Business life cannot be forced back to 
the conditions prevailing half a century ago. No 



18 Vital American Problems 

body of men can legislate us back to the partner- 
ship days, or to the individualistic method of doing 
business any more than they can legislate us back 
to the stage-coach. The world of industry always 
marches forward. The combination idea has 
come to stay, law or no law. 

The situation must be faced as it exists in the 
United States at the present time. Economic 
conditions must be recognized and industrial 
movements taken into account, while the under- 
lying principles of commercial life must not be 
forgotten. 

Since many combinations have advanced the 
prices of the articles they produce or control to so 
high a figure as to wrong the people, and since 
stock-watering and selfish ruinous financiering 
have become the common attributes of corporate 
management, and since legal secrecy protects 
the illegal, fraudulent, and unholy dealings of the 
corporation with the public, it is imperative 
that this new force which stands merely for the 
latest stage of industrial growth should be con- 
trolled by law. 



II 

STATE OR FEDERAL CONTROL 

State Control. — The bidding of the States for 
the chartering of corporations has created a body 
of laws which confer great powers on those who 
are willing to pay a small incorporation tax in 
exchange for such privileges. So little super- 
vision and control are now exercised by the State 
governments that corporations are able, through 
the secrecy which surrounds their actions, to over- 
ride the law and to some extent to be creatures sub- 
ject only to the wishes and desires of the corporate 
managers. 

Mr. James B. Dill, in an address before the 
Seminary in Economics of Harvard University, 
March 10, 1903, summarized very clearly one of 
the grave evils of State control of corporations 
engaged in interstate trade: 

"We find some charter-granting States legislating 
for the following classes of corporations: 

" 1. Corporations organized primarily for the pur- 
pose of doing business outside the State. 

"2. Corporations organized for the purpose of 

19 



20 



Vital American Problems 



doing without the State business which is forbidden 

within the Slate which created them. 

" ;. ThoSQ formed for the purpose of doing their 

business as an entity outside the State, being specifi- 
cally forbidden by their charters from operating OT 

Carrying on such business in the State which created 
them. 

" .p For the express purpose of doing business in 
don, sometimes in violation, of the law of a State 
into which they purpose to go and operate." 1 

The record of the past few years has vindicated 

the truth of the statement contained in the Report 

of the Committee on the Judiciary, referred to the 

House o\ Representatives on May 2$ t 1000: 

"If a State has within its limits . ; . gig rust 

or monopoly, while it may and in some eases has 
limited its powers or annulled its charter, such S 

is not apt to destroy it by amending or annulling 

charter, or imp est fictions. So long as such 

monopoly employs thousands of hands, receives 

S out millions of dollars to the people of the S:. 
and pays thousands of dollars in taxes into the S 
and local treasuries mainly drawn from the people of 
other S;. ad withal exerts vast polil wer, 

a is lial j . true or false, 

that the benefits derived h such 

topoly within her I 

[ b wr States 

^xiology, vol, \ 



The "Trust" Problem 21 

their vitals, are powerless or inactive for the reasons 
stated." 

Mr. Ray of New York, in a debate in the House 
of Representatives May 13, igoo, summarized very 
clearly the laws which render the States powerless 
to protect themselves. He said : 

"The States cannot protect themselves against 
monopoly, combinations, and conspiracy to monopo- 
lize manufacture and production and fix and control 
prices, for the following reasons: 

" 1. The State has no power whatever over inter- 
state commerce; interstate transportation of persons 
or property. 

" 2. The State has no power to prevent the corpo- 
rations, associations, companies, or citizens of another 
State from coming into it and doing business therein 
if engaged in interstate commerce. 

"3. No State has power over the corporations, 
associations, companies, or citizens of another so long 
as they remain outside of her territorial limits. 

M 4. No State has power to prevent the sending or 
bringing into her limits the manufactures or products 
of corporations, associations, companies, or individu- 
als, organized, doing business, or residing in another, 
for use, even with the consent of Congress, or for any 
other purpose without such consent. 

"5. No State can prevent the purchase or control 
of the stock, property, etc., of its corporations, asso- 
ciations, companies, or citizens by those chartered, 
organized, or residing in another. 

" The result is that a monopoly existing in one State 



22 Vital American Problems 

and controlling the production, ownership, and price 
of an article of general use and necessity may, unless 
Congress intervenes when sent for sale, . . . send 
its productions into every State and supply the market 
there." x 

An important decision regarding the power of 
a State to exclude a foreign corporation or impose 
conditions on its admission was rendered by the 
Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, in 
Butler Bros. Shoe Co. v. United States Rubber 
Co. in October, 1907. The court held that the 
broad statement in Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall, 168, 
that a State may exclude a foreign corporation, or 
impose such conditions as it deems proper on the 
right of such corporation to do business within 
the State, has been qualified by subsequent deci- 
sions of the Federal Supreme Court, and the 
following exceptions to it are established: (1) 
Every corporation empowered by the State of its 
creation to engage in interstate commerce may 
carry on that commerce in sound and recognized 
articles of commerce in every other State in the 
Union. Every prohibition, obstruction, or burden 
which the other States attempt to impose upon 
such business is unconstitutional and void. 
(2) Every corporation of every State which is 
in the employ of the United States has the right 
to exercise the necessary corporate powers and 

1 33 Congressional Record, p. 668. 



The " Trust' ' Problem 23 

to transact the requisite business to discharge 
the duties of that employment in every other 
State in the Union, without let or hindrance from 
the latter. (3) Every corporation of every 
State has the absolute right to institute, maintain, 
and defend in the Federal courts, and to remove 
to those courts, its suits in any other State in the 
cases and on the terms prescribed by the Acts of 
Congress. The court held that the constitution 
and statutes of Colorado, prohibiting any foreign 
corporation from doing any business whatever, 
from exercising any corporate power, and from 
prosecuting or defending any suit in that State 
unless it file certain writings, pay certain fees, etc., 
were unconstitutional in so far as they attempted 
to limit the exercise in that State by a foreign cor- 
poration of its right to engage in interstate com- 
merce and to institute and defend in the Federal 
courts suits arising out of that commerce. 1 

The individual States have no right to interfere 
with interstate commerce, or with the objects of 
interstate commerce, as neither the United States 
Constitution nor Congress has specifically dele- 
gated such power to them, and, to-day, corpo- 
rations may be organized in one State and ship 
their goods into all other States, and thereby 
nullify the effect of any State law looking to the 
control and regulation of corporations. No mat- 
ter how wise and conservative may be the laws 

1 156 Fed. Rep., i. 



24 Vital American Problems 

enacted in a single State, corporations can be 
organized in any other State and carry on busi- 
ness with the citizens of all the States in the 
Union. No State can tax the agents of a foreign 
corporation, nor shut out its goods nor tax the 
goods while in transit; and even if it should 
deny to the foreign corporation the right to sue in 
the State courts to recover the price of the goods 
sold, the foreign corporation could not be pre- 
vented from pursuing the same remedies in the 
Federal courts. 

The United States Supreme Court has declared : 

" It is not in the power of one State, when establish- 
ing regulations for the conduct of private business of 
a particular kind, to give its own citizens essential 
privileges connected with that business, which it 
denies citizens of other States." * 

The futility of State control over corporations 
engaged in interstate and foreign trade has become 
so apparent that the American people, though 
much against their wishes, are compelled to turn 
for protection to the Federal government. 

Federal Control. — The Constitution of the 
United States provides that Congress shall have 
the power and authority "to regulate commerce 
with foreign nations and among the several States " 
(Art. i, Sec. VIII., Clause III.) ; "to lay and collect 
taxes, duties, imports, and excises" (Art* i, Sec. 

1 Blake v. McClung, 174 U. S., 239. 



The "Trust" Problem 25 

VI L, Sub. 1) ; and "to make all laws which shall 
be necessary and proper for carrying into execution 
the foregoing powers" (Art. 1, Sec. VIII., Sub. 18). 
The origin of the " commerce clause' ' is found 
in the sixth resolution submitted to the Consti- 
tutional Convention by Edmund Randolph on the 
29th day of May, 1787. This resolution, outlining 
the commercial powers which should belong to 
the Federal government, stated: 

"That the national legislature ought to be em- 
powered to enjoy the legislative right vested in 
Congress by the Confederation; and, moreover, to 
legislate in all cases to which the separate States 
are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the 
United States may be interrupted by the exercise of 
individual legislation." * 

The question immediately arises as to whether 
the national government has the power to create 
corporations as a "necessary and proper' ' means 
for "carrying into execution' ' its authority "to 
regulate commerce with foreign nations and among 
the several States." 

" Commerce,' ' as the word is used in the Consti- 
tution, has received from the courts the broadest 
definition. It includes the exchange of goods, 
the transportation of merchandise, the transit of 
individuals, navigation, the transmission of intelli- 
gence from one State to another or from one State 

« Elliott's Debates (Wash., 1836), vol. i., p. 144. 



26 Vital American Problems 

to a foreign country, and, in fact, every species 
of commercial intercourse among the States. * 
Its meaning is extended not only to the goods 
which are transported, but it "also embraces 
within its control all the instrumentalities by 
which that commerce may be carried on, and the 
means by which it may be aided and encouraged." 2 
Chief Justice Marshall, in M'Culloch against 
the State of Maryland, in discussing the powers 
of the United States government as defined by 
the Constitution, said: 

" Among the enumerated powers, we do not find 
that of establishing a bank or creating a corporation. 
But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like 
the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or 
implied powers, and which requires that everything 
granted shall be expressly and minutely described. . . . 
We find the great powers to lay and collect taxes; 
to borrow money; to regulate commerce. . . . The 
instrument does not profess to enumerate the means 
by which the powers it confers may be executed ; nor 
does it prohibit the creation of a corporation, if the 
existence of such a being be essential to the beneficial 
exercise of those powers. . . . The power of creating 
a corporation, though appertaining to sovereignty, 
is not, like the power of making war, or levying taxes, 
or of regulating commerce, a great substantive and 

1 Gibbon v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 190, Champion v. Ames, 188 

U. S., 353. 

2 Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Penn., 114 U. S., 196, 204, 
Hopkins v. United States, 171 U. S., 598. 



The "Trust" Problem 27 

independent power, which cannot be implied as inci- 
dental to other powers, or used as a means of executing 
them. It is never the end for which other powers 
are exercised, but a means by which other objects are 
accomplished. . . . The power of creating a corpora- 
tion is never used for its own sake, but for the purpose 
of effecting something else. No sufficient reason is, 
therefore, perceived why it may not pass as incidental 
to those powers which are expressly given, if it be a 
direct mode of executing them. But the Constitution 
of the United States has not left the right of Congress 
to employ the necessary means for the execution of 
the powers conferred on the government to general 
reasoning. To its enumeration of powers is added 
that of making ' all laws which shall be necessary and 
proper for carrying into execution the foregoing 
powers ; and all other powers vested by this Constitu- 
tion in the government of the United States, or in 
any department thereof. . . .' Congress is not em- 
powered by it to make all laws which may have re- 
lation to the powers conferred on the government, 
but such only as may be 'necessary and proper' for 
carrying them into execution. The word ' necessary ' 
is considered as controlling the whole sentence; and 
as limiting the right to pass laws for the execution of 
the granted powers to such as are indispensable, and 
without which the power would be nugatory. . . . 
Is it true that this is the sense in which the word 
'necessary* is always used? Does it always import 
an absolute physical necessity, so strong that one 
thing, to which another may be termed necessary, 
cannot exist without that other? We think it does 
not. ... To employ the means necessary to an end, 



28 Vital American Problems 

is generally understood as employing any means calcu- 
lated to produce an end, and not as being confined 
to those single means, without which the end would 
be entirely unattainable. . . . We think the sound 
construction of the Constitution must allow to the 
national legislature that discretion, with respect to 
the means by which the powers it confers are to be 
carried into execution, which will enable that body 
to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner 
most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legiti- 
mate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, 
and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly 
adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but 
consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, 
are constitutional. 

"That a corporation must be considered as a means 
not less usual, not of higher dignity, not more requiring 
a particular specification than other means, has been 
sufficiently proved. If we look to the origin of cor- 
porations, to the manner in which they have been 
framed in that government from which we have de- 
rived most of our legal principles and ideas, or to the 
uses to which they have been applied, we find no reason 
to suppose that a constitution, omitting, and wisely 
omitting, to enumerate all the means for carrying 
into execution the great powers vested in government, 
ought to have specified this. Had it been intended 
to grant this power as one which should be distinct 
and independent, to be exercised in any case whatever, 
it would have found a place among the enumerated 
powers of the government. But being considered 
merely as a means, to be employed only for the 
purpose of carrying into execution the given powers, 



The " Trust" Problem 29 

there could be no motive for particularly mentioning 

it" ! 

The soundness of the principles laid down in 
this decision has never been impugned by any 
court of the United States, and this case stands 
to-day as the authoritative dictum of the law of 
the land. 

If the individual States have the right to require 
the filing of articles of incorporation and the 
performance of other stated acts as a pre-requisite 
to engaging in commerce or business within the 
confines of the State by a number of citizens who 
desire to act in a joint capacity, why has not Con- 
gress the same right to demand the performance of 
the same acts as a condition precedent to the 
privilege of engaging in interstate commerce? 

Mr. Justice Harlan in the Northern Securities 
case said: "The power of Congress over inter- 
state and international commerce is as full and 
complete as is the power of any State over its 
domestic commerce." 2 

Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for the court in the 
case of California v. Central Pacific Railroad Co., 
referring to the acts of Congress chartering cor- 
porations to build railroads across the continent, 
said: 

M It cannot at the present day be doubted that 

* 4 Wheaton, 403. 
2 193 U. S., 342. 



30 Vital American Problems 

Congress, under the power to regulate commerce 
among the several States, as well as to provide for 
postal accommodations and military exigencies, have 
authority to pass these laws. . . . The authority of 
Congress over the territories of the United States, 
and its power to grant franchises exercisible therein, 
are, and ever have been, undoubted. But the wider 
power was very freely exercised, and much to the 
general satisfaction, in the creation of the vast system 
of railroads connecting the East with the Pacific, 
traversing States as well as territories, and employing 
the agency of State as well as Federal corporations/' * 

Mr. Justice Gray, in delivering the opinion of 
the court in Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., 
said: 

"The validity of the Act of Congress incorporating 
the North River Bridge Company rests upon prin- 
ciples of constitutional law, now established beyond 
dispute. The Congress of the United States, being 
empowered by the Constitution to regulate commerce 
among the several States and to pass all laws necessary 
or proper for carrying into execution any of the powers 
specifically conferred, may make use of any appro- 
priate means for this end. . . . Congress, therefore, 
may create corporations as appropriate means of 
exercising the powers of government." 2 

Exercise of Federal Power. — Congress, re- 
lying upon the decisions of the Supreme Court, 

i 127 U. S., 157. 

2 153 U. S., 810; see also Champion v. Ames, 188 U. S., 353. 



The "Trust" Problem 31 

from time to time has chartered banking, railway, 
telegraph, bridge, and canal companies, the validity 
of which acts remain unquestioned. 

Among the corporations chartered by Congress 
to do business as interstate carriers may be cited 
the following : 

Washington, Alexandria, and Georgetown Steam 
Packet Company, Act of March 3, 1829. 

Union Pacific Railway Company, Acts of July 
1, 1862, July 2, 1864, and March 3, 1865. 

Northern Pacific Railroad Company, Acts of 
July 2, 1864, May 7, 1866, and July 1, 1868. 

Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company, Act of 
July 27,1866. 

Washington Mail Steamboat Company, Act of 
March 2, 1870. 

Washington and Boston Steamship Company, 
Act of May 14, 1870. 

Texas Pacific Railway Company, Act of March 
3> 1871. 

In 1886, the American people were aroused by 
the prevailing practice of common carriers of 
discriminating between shippers by giving to 
favorites unjust and unreasonable preferences 
and advantages, by carrying their goods at a less 
rate than was given to their competitors, and with 
a mighty voice insisted that Congress should exer- 
cise its power to regulate commerce by enacting 
a law which should secure to every one equal 
commercial opportunities and to place all shippers 



32 Vital American Problems 

on an absolute equality as to rates and tariffs. 
The result of this demand was the passage by Con- 
gress on February 4, 1887, of an act commonly 
known as the Interstate Commerce Law. 

This Act provided for the appointment of a 
Commission with " authority to inquire into the 
management of the business of all common 
carriers " engaged in interstate commerce, and in 
case it found that the carrier had violated the 
law, to order it to desist and make reparation 
for the injury done. For a failure to obey the 
orders of the Commission, the Circuit Court of the 
United States could be called upon to compel their 
enforcement. 

The Act further provided, 

1 ' That if any common carrier . . . shall directly 
or indirectly, by any special rate, rebate, drawback, 
or other device, charge, demand, collect, or receive 
from any person or persons a greater or less compen- 
sation for any service rendered, in the transportation 
of passengers or property, . . . than it charges, de- 
mands, collects, or receives from any other person or 
persons for doing for him or them a like or contem- 
poraneous service in the transportation of a like kind 
of traffic under substantially similar circumstances 
and conditions, such common carrier shall be deemed 
guilty of unjust discrimination, which is hereby pro- 
hibited and declared to be unlawful." 

The Act also required every common carrier 
under penalty of fine and imprisonment to file 



The " Trust' ' Problem 33 

with the Interstate Commerce Commission copies 
of its schedules of freight rates. It also pro- 
hibited the pooling of freights and the division of 
earnings. 

This Act, while remedying many abuses, failed 
to prevent secret rebates from being given by 
common carriers. These secret rebates and dis- 
criminations enabled favored shippers to destroy 
competition in the lines of business in which 
they were engaged. To further their plans for 
controlling the market, the favored manufacturers 
organized combinations in the form of trusts, 
which enabled them to fix and maintain prices 
arbitrarily to the injury of the general public. 
This condition of affairs became so onerous and 
oppressive that on July 2, 1890, an act known as 
the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was passed by 
Congress "to protect trade and commerce against 
unlawful restraints and monopolies/ ' This Act 
declared that 

" Every contract, combination in the form of trust 
or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or 
commerce among the several States, or with foreign 
nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person 
who shall make any such contract or engage in any 
such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed 
guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction thereof, 
shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand 
dollars, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or 
by both punishments, in the discretion of the court." 



34 Vital American Problems 

This law, which affected such wide-spread in- 
terests in such a vital manner, was meagre, in- 
definite, and uncertain in its description of the 
offences denounced and its interpretation was 
left to the courts as cases arose. Construed 
literally, this statute could be used to punish 
combinations of the most useful character, 
whose business arrangements are conceded by 
all to be legitimate and proper. And the 
difficulty the courts have had in its construc- 
tion has been to draw a line which would fur- 
nish a clear rule for the guidance of the public 
between those acts which Congress intended to 
declare to be illegal and those acts with which 
Congress had no intention of interfering. It could 
not be expected, therefore, that the Act would 
prove effective, depending as it did on judicial 
interpretation to make it clear. Nevertheless, 
some evil conditions were remedied and our 
national lawmakers were educated in the require- 
ments of a Federal law and in the pitfalls necessary 
to be avoided. 

In view of the ineffectiveness of these laws to 
destroy the abuses of rebates and unfair con- 
cessions to favored shippers, on February 9, 1903, 
the Congress passed the so-called Elkins Act, 
thereby increasing the powers of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, and declaring that "the 
wilful violation upon the part of any carrier . . . 
strictly to observe such [published] tariffs until 



The " Trust" Problem 35 

changed according to law, shall [constitute] a mis- 
demeanor " ; and further declaring it to be unlawful 
"for any person, persons, or corporations to offer, 
grant, or give, or to solicit, accept, or receive any 
rebate, concession, or discrimination in respect to 
the transportation of any property in interstate or 
foreign commerce by any common carrier . . . 
whereby any such property shall by any device 
whatever be transported at a less rate than that 
named in the tariffs published and filed by such 
carrier,' ' and providing that "every person or 
corporation who shall offer, grant, or give, or 
solicit, accept, or receive any such rebate, conces- 
sion, or discrimination, shall be deemed guilty 
of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof 
shall be punished by a fine of not less than one 
thousand dollars nor more than twenty thou- 
sand dollars.' ' 

To further facilitate the work of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission the Congress on February 
14, 1903, passed an act creating the Department 
of Commerce and Labor and establishing in such 
department a Bureau of Corporations with a 
Commissioner empowered to make 

" diligent investigation into the organization, conduct, 
and management of the business of any corporation, 
joint stock company, or corporate combination en- 
gaged in commerce among the several States and 
with foreign nations excepting common carriers . . . 
and to gather such information and data as will enable 



36 



Vital American Problems 



the President of the United States to make recommen- 
dations to Congress for legislation for the regulation of 
such commerce/' 

In furtherance of these provisions the Com- 
missioner was given power to " subpoena and 
compel the attendance and testimony of witnesses 
and the production of documentary evidence and 
to administer oaths.' ' 

After several months of earnest and full dis- 
cussion of the powers of Congress to enlarge upon 
the laws already enacted, Congress on June 29, 
1906, passed an act popularly known as the 
Railway Rate Bill, which still further increased 
the powers of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission and gave to this body larger and more 
complete control over common carriers engaged 
in interstate and foreign commerce. 

This Act empowers the Commission, if upon 
complaint it finds that a rate, or any regulation 
or practice affecting a rate, is " unjust or unrea- 
sonable, or unjustly discriminatory, or unduly 
preferential, or prejudicial/ ' to determine and 
prescribe a maximum rate to be charged there- 
after and modify the regulation or practice 
pertaining thereto. 

It further authorizes the Commission to require 
annual reports from all common carriers, that 
shall contain specified information; to prescribe 
the form of any rate and all accounts, records, 
and memoranda to be kept by carriers, making it 



The " Trust' ' Problem 37 

unlawful for the carriers to keep any other accounts, 
records, or memoranda than those prescribed 
or approved by the Commission; and provides, 
further, that all accounts of the carriers shall be 
open to the inspection of the special agents or 
examiners employed by the Commission. 

On June 30, 1906, Congress passed the Pure 
Food Law. This law prohibits the manufacture, 
sale, or transportation of adulterated or deleterious 
foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors. It requires 
all manufacturers to file with the Department 
of Agriculture a guaranty to the effect that the 
food or drug is not adulterated or mislabelled 
before any such article is admitted to interstate 
commerce. 

The Meat Inspection Law enacted March 4, 
1907, provides for meat inspection from hoof to 
can at government expense as a preliminary to 
the entrance of such products into interstate and 
foreign commerce. 

The scope of the Act is set forth in the following 
provision : 

4 'For the purpose of preventing the use in inter- 
state or foreign commerce, as hereinafter provided, 
of meat and meat food products which are unsound, 
unhealthful, unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for 
human food, the Secretary of Agriculture, at his 
discretion, may cause to be made, by inspectors 
appointed for that purpose, an examination and in- 
spection of all cattle, sheep, swine, and goats, before 



38 Vital American Problems 

they shall be allowed to enter into any slaughtering, 
packing, meat-canning, rendering, or similar estab- 
lishments in which they are to be slaughtered, and the 
meat and meat food products thereof are to be used 
in interstate or foreign commerce; and all cattle, 
swine, sheep, and goats found on such inspection to 
show symptoms of disease shall be set apart and 
slaughtered separately from all other cattle, sheep, 
swine, or goats, and when so slaughtered the carcasses 
of said cattle, sheep, swine, or goats shall be subject 
to a careful examination and inspection, all as provided 
by the rules and regulations to be prescribed by the 
Secretary of Agriculture as herein provided for." 

The Pure Food and Meat Inspection Laws, in 
effect requiring a license to engage in interstate 
and foreign commerce, are the most advanced 
steps taken by Congress to control the articles 
entering into interstate trade. 

There has been a distinct evolution in the 
recognition of the power of Congress over the 
agencies engaged and the articles transported in 
interstate and foreign commerce, and it can be 
predicted with confidence that there will be a 
further advance along these lines. This is the 
spirit of the times and the movement is irresistible. 

Interstate commerce in the 18th century was 
simple in its relations. The business of each State 
was its own. Giant enterprises owned in one State 
and engaged in commerce in other States, so as to 
become subject to their jurisdiction, were few 



The "Trust" Problem 39 

and comparatively unimportant. This condition 
existed practically unchanged for eighty years, 
and the "commerce clause' ' remained almost 
unref erred to during that time. During the past 
thirty years, however, the changed commercial 
conditions have made this clause to become the 
most important and conspicuous clause in the 
Federal Constitution. 

The political doctrine of State rights is rapidly 
growing weaker while that of centralized democ- 
racy or federation is daily gaining in popular favor. 
The people, realizing how great is the failure of 
the individual States in curbing and controlling 
the economic and industrial agencies which are 
overriding the rights of citizens, are seeking to 
accomplish through the agency of the national 
government the protection they vitally need. 

Mr. Elihu Root, our present Secretary of State, 
in an address before the Pennsylvania Society in 
New York on December 12, 1906, said: 

"The Federal Anti-Trust Law, the Anti-Rebate Law, 
the Railroad Rate Law, the Meat Inspection Law, the 
Oleomargarine Law, the Pure Food Law, are examples 
of the purpose of the people of the United States to do 
through the agency of the national government the 
thing which the separate State governments formerly 
did adequately, but no longer do adequately. 

" ... The governmental control which they 
[the people] deem just and necessary they will have. 
It may be that such control could better be exercised 



40 Vital American Problems 

in particular instances by the governments of the 
States, but the people will have the control they need 
either from the States or from the national govern- 
ment, and if the States fail to furnish it in due measure, 
sooner or later constructions of the Constitution will 
be found to vest the power where it will be exercised 
by the national government." 

Criticisms and denunciations of Mr. Root's 
address came from all parts of the country. The 
cry of imperialism was raised throughout the 
land. But Mr. Root was not expressing his 
personal views; he was not announcing a policy; 
not forecasting what a political party might 
bring to pass, but was simply giving a historical 
review of the past ten years together with an 
accurate picture of the present-day movements in 
the United States. 

President Roosevelt in his address before the 
Harvard Union, February 23, 1907, said in regard 
to such criticisms : 

" There has been a curious revival of the doctrine 
of State rights in connection with these questions 
[the control of corporations in the interest of the 
public] by the people who know that the States cannot 
with justice to both sides practically control the 
corporations, and who, therefore, advocate such con- 
trol because they do not venture to express their real 
wish, which is, that there shall be no control at all. . . . 

11 But those who invoke the doctrine of State rights 
to protect State corporate creations in predatory 
activities extended through other States are as short- 



The " Trust" Problem 41 

sighted as those who once invoked the same doctrine 
to protect the special slaveholding interest. The 
States have shown that they have not the ability to 
curb the power of syndicated wealth and, therefore, 
in the interest of the people, it must be done by 
national action. " 

In considering the extension of the applica- 
tion of the powers of Congress, the fact should be 
kept clearly in mind that the States possess the 
sole right and power to provide regulations for 
intra-state commerce, that is, for commerce the 
transportation of which begins and ends in the 
State. They have no power, however, to regulate 
commerce passing through and into two or more 
States. To meet this condition the Constitution of 
the United States provides that Congress shall 
have power to regulate commerce between the 
States. For Congress to regulate interstate 
commerce, therefore, would in no wise interfere 
with nor limit the powers vested in the individual 
States to regulate the commerce carried on solely 
within their several jurisdictions. 

"Centralization has already taken place out 
there in the world of commerce and industry/ ' 
said Judge Charles F. Amidon of the United States 
District Court for North Dakota. And he added: 
"The only question remaining is: 'Shall the 
government take cognizance of the fact?'" 

The various acts passed by Congress looking 
to the control of the agencies engaged in interstate 
commerce are but an indication of the slow process 



42 Vital American Problems 

of nationalization which this federal union of 
States has been going through since the Union was 
formed — a progressive process, without which 
the experiment of a federal republic, on a scale of 
such magnitude, under such conditions of expan- 
siveness, could never have been a success. 

The Supreme Court of the United States in 
a recent decision clearly defines and forcibly 
announces the adaptability of the Federal Consti- 
tution to the national growth and development 
of our country. It says : 

"The Constitution is a written instrument. As 
such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant 
when adopted, it means now. Being a grant of powers 
to a Government its language is general, and, as 
changes come in social and political life, it embraces 
in its grasp all new conditions which are within the 
scope of the powers in terms conferred. In other 
words, while the powers granted do not change, they 
apply from generation to generation to all things to 
which they are in their nature applicable. This in 
no manner abridges the fact of its changeless nature 
and meaning.' ' 1 

Congress has recently been giving some con- 
sideration to the subject of Federal control of 
all the agencies engaged in interstate and foreign 
commerce by compelling all who wish to engage 
in such trade to act only under Federal charter. 
Various bills have been introduced looking to the 

1 South Carolina v. U. S. t 199 U. S., 448-9 (1905), 



The " Trust' ' Problem 43 

establishment of a Federal corporation depart- 
ment, and President Roosevelt has been persistent 
in his efforts to crystallize public opinion so that 
Congress will be compelled in the near future to 
enact a Federal corporation law. 

For the past fifteen years, under the growth of 
gigantic combinations of capital whose operations 
are interstate or international, the American 
people have been growing more and more con- 
vinced of the necessity of the Federal government 
extending its power to control and regulate those 
agencies over which the individual States have 
no jurisdiction. From year to year as these com- 
mercial and industrial agencies have grown in 
power and become more arrogant in practice, 
Congress has been extending its protecting arm 
to prevent injustice and evil being visited upon 
the people. So great have grown the evils under 
the operation of the giant corporations that it may 
be confidently predicted that the American people 
will soon insist that Congress shall exercise its 
power to bring relief to them. 

Former Commissioner James R. Garfield of the 
Bureau of Corporations, in his first report, issued 
in December, 1904, after reviewing the decisions 
of the Supreme Court of the United States as to 
the powers of Congress to enact a Federal cor- 
poration law, summarizes his brief as follows: 

4 'It may be considered as established that . . . 
Congress may: 



44 Vital American Problems 

44 (i) Create corporations as a means of regulating 
interstate commerce. 

" (2) Give to such corporations the power to engage 
in interstate or foreign commerce. 

" (3) Prohibit any other corporations or individuals 
from engaging in the same. 

" (4) As a condition precedent to the grant of such 
corporate power, lay any restrictions it chooses upon 
the organization's conduct or management of such 
corporation. 

" (5) Tax interstate commerce at will and the in- 
strumentalities and corporations engaged therein. 

" (6) Provide regulations for the carrying on of in- 
terstate commerce generally and in such local affairs as 
are now left to the States in the ' silence of Congress ' 
under the principle established in Cooley v. Port 
Wardens (12 How., 229), and in the carrying out of 
such powers it may use any or all means * which are 
appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, 
which are not prohibited, but consistent with the 
letter and spirit of the Constitution/ M 

The power of Congress to regulate interstate 
commerce being almost limitless, the task in hand 
is to devise a system of laws which, while preserv- 
ing the benefits of private ownership, shall, at the 
same time, furnish adequate means to supervise, 
regulate, and control corporations engaged in in- 
terstate and foreign commerce, so that the good 
features in corporate life may be fostered and 
the evil features be eliminated. 



Ill 

THE SOLUTION 

THE Constitution of the United States having 
vested in Congress the power " to regulate 
commerce with foreign nations and among the 
several States," and the Supreme Court having 
decided that the national legislature has the au- 
thority "to pass all laws necessary or proper for 
carrying into execution any of the powers specifi- 
cally conferred* ' upon the Federal government, 
it is suggested that a national incorporation law 
embodying the following provisions be enacted 
by Congress. 

Bureau of Corporations. — The power and 
authority of the Bureau of Corporations in the 
Department of Commerce and Labor should be 
enlarged so as to include the right to grant 
charters of incorporation to all who seek to engage 
in interstate or foreign commerce. This Bureau 
should have not only this power, but all individ- 
uals, corporations, joint stock companies, and 
other forms of organization now existing or which 
hereinafter may be chartered by a State govern- 
ment, should be prohibited from engaging in 

45 



46 Vital American Problems 

interstate and foreign commerce until chartered 
by it. This prohibition would have no effect on the 
corporations chartered by State governments 
whose operations are confined within the limits of 
the State creating them. But, if the corporations 
extend their activities beyond the boundaries of 
the State of their creation and over into other 
States, and enter into commerce with citizens of 
different States, thereby furnishing a basis for the 
jurisdiction of the national courts, they have 
gone beyond the control of the State granting the 
charter and have voluntarily brought their organi- 
zatiou under Federal power, to which they should 
render allegiance. 

This prohibition can be enforced by taxing 
all agencies engaged in interstate and foreign trade 
not organized by this Department, so heavily 
as to compel them to seek refuge under a Federal 
charter. Such tax should be laid on the amount 
of the gross sales made in interstate business, in 
order to prevent the reduction of the tax by the 
deduction of padded charges in arriving at so- 
called net sales. 

Such a plan was put in operation during the 
Civil War, when the United States government, 
becoming obliged to secure a market for its bonds, 
placed a prohibitive tax of ten per cent, on the 
issue of banknotes by State banks, by means of 
which tax the notes of State banks quickly went 
out of circulation because there was no profit in 



The "Trust" Problem 47 

their issue and a majority of the State banks were 
forced to accept national charters and to buy 
United States bonds. 

In Veazie Bank v. Penno the Supreme Court 
in discussing the constitutionality of the Federal 
tax on State bank notes said : 

4 'Having thus, in the exercise of undisputed con- 
stitutional powers, undertaken to provide a currency 
for the whole country, it cannot be questioned that 
Congress may, constitutionally, secure the benefit 
of it to the people by appropriate legislation. Viewed 
in this light, as well as in the other light of a duty on 
contracts or property, we cannot doubt the constitu- 
tionality of the tax under consideration.' ' l 

The Supreme Court in National Bank v. United 
States, said with regard to the tax placed on 
banknotes : 

"The taxation was no doubt intended to destroy 
the use; but that, as we have just seen, Congress has 
power to do." 2 

Since the Civil War the United States has 
maintained an extensive system of excise taxes 
on the manufacture of liquors, tobacco, and various 
other goods, although for some time past the 
manufacture of such articles has been conducted 
by State corporations. Such taxes have been 

1 8 Wallace, 533. Affirmed in National Bank v. United 
States, 101 U. S., 1. 

2 101 U. S., 1. 



48 Vital American Problems 

upheld as legal by the Supreme Court during the 
forty years of their extensive application. 

The tax imposed by Congress, in the War 
Revenue Act of 1898, on sales made at exchanges 
or boards of trade came before the Supreme Court 
in the case of Nicol v. Ames. Replying to the con- 
tention that the tax was direct and yet not appor- 
tioned according to population, the Court said 
that the tax was an excise laid upon the privilege 
offered at boards of trade, and was indirect. To 
the further contention that the tax though indi- 
rect, was not uniform, the Court said : 

"In this case there is that uniformity which the 
Constitution requires. The tax or duty is uniform 
throughout the United States, and it is uniform or, 
in other words, equal, upon all who avail themselves of 
the privileges or facilities offered at the exchanges; 
and it is not necessary, in order to be uniform, that 
the tax should be levied upon all who make sales of 
the same kind of things, whether at an exchange or 
elsewhere." 

The Court further laid down this rule affirming 
the principle enunciated by the Supreme Court 
in National Bank v. United States in regard to 
the Federal power to tax : 

"The power to tax is one great power upon which 
the whole national fabric is based. It is as necessary 
to the existence and prosperity of a nation as is the air 
he breathes to the natural man. It is not only the 



The " Trust' ' Problem 49 

power to destroy, but it is also the power to keep 
alive." 1 

"The power to tax," said the court in Veazie Bank 
v. Fenno, "may be exercised oppressively upon 
persons, but the responsibility of the legislature is 
not to the courts, but to the people by whom its 
members are elected. So if a particular tax bears 
heavily upon a corporation or a class of corporations 
it cannot for that reason only be pronounced con- 
trary to the Constitution.' ' 2 

In the Lottery cases the Supreme Court declared 
that the carriage of a lottery ticket from State 
to State was interstate commerce and could be 
prohibited by Congress, and added : 

"The Act of July 2, 1900, known as the Sherman 
Anti-Trust Law, which is based upon the power of 
Congress to regulate commerce among the States, is 
an illustration of the proposition that regulation may 
take the form of prohibition. The object of that 
Act was to protect trade and commerce against 
unlawful restraint and monopolies; to accomplish 
that object, Congress declared certain contracts to be 
illegal. That Act in effect prohibited the doing of 
certain things, and its prohibitory clauses have been 
sustained in several cases as valid under the power of 
Congress to regulate interstate commerce." 3 

Chief Justice Marshall in M'Culloch v. Mary- 
land said: "The power to tax involves the power 

1 173 U. S., so9~S 1 S' 2 8 Wallace, 533. 

3 188 U.S., 321. 

4 



Y • 



50 Vital American Problems 

to destroy " l \ hence, corporations chartered by 
a State government and engaged in interstate and 
foreign commerce may not only be regulated but 
may be destroyed by taxes imposed by Congress. 

Unless the Bureau of Corporations has the sole 
right to incorporate associations engaged in inter- 
state and foreign commerce, the purpose of this 
plan would be defeated. Sub-companies would be 
organized in the different States, with or without 
the intervention of a holding company, and would 
not be subject to the control and regulation of this 
Bureau. 

This Bureau should have not only the sole right 
to incorporate associations engaged in interstate 
and foreign commerce, but it should have absolute 
charge and complete control of its corporate 
children. 

This power to create corporations to engage in 
interstate and foreign commerce which is vested 
in the Federal government, the individual States 
can in no wise interfere with, neither can they in 
any manner hinder, impede, or lay any burden 
on any corporation chartered by the United States. 
Chief Justice Marshall, in M'Culloch v. State of 
Maryland, said: 

" This great principle is, that the Constitution and 
the laws made in pursuance thereof are supreme; 
that they control the constitution and laws of the 

i 4 Wheaton, 316. 



The "Trust" Problem 51 

respective States, and cannot be controlled by them. 
From this, which may be almost termed an axiom, 
other propositions are deduced as corollaries, on the 
truth or error of which, and on their application to 
this case, the cause has been supposed to depend. 
These are, ist, that a power to create implies a power 
to preserve. 2d. That a power to destroy, if wielded 
by a different hand, is hostile to, and incompatible 
with these powers to create and to preserve. 3d. That 
where this repugnancy exists, that authority which 
is supreme must control, not yield to that over which 
it is supreme. These propositions, as abstract truths, 
would, perhaps, never be contro verted/ ' * 

Incorporation Tax. — Every corporation incor- 
porated by this Bureau should pay an organization 
tax of one tenth of one per cent, upon the amount 
of capital stock authorized, and a like tax upon 
any subsequent issue. 

The average organization tax in the various 
States is about one tenth of one per cent. Experi- 
ence has shown that this is the rate which incor- 
porators are willing to pay for the privilege of 
owning a corporate charter and the amount that 
has been considered to be a reasonable charge for 
granting such privilege. 

The incorporation tax should be so low as to 
deter no group of men from carrying on business 
in a corporate capacity, for it is to corporations, 
with their large aggregation of capital, that we 

1 4 Wheaton, 424. 



52 Vital American Problems 

must look for the development of our country. 
Corporations, when backed by large capital, expert 
skill, and great business ability, have often con- 
ferred material benefit on the community at large, 
and almost invariably insured the promotion of 
prosperity on a durable basis. They have furnished 
the people with many of the commodities of civil- 
ized existence at much lower prices than formerly, 
not only without decreasing the wages of labor, but 
in many instances increasing them, and eventually 
extending the field for a larger number of employees. 
India-rubber goods, tobacco, leather, and a great 
variety of other commodities are cheaper than at 
any former period of our country's existence; 
and wages are higher to-day than they have ever 
been, except in war times. Without corporations, 
the great railway systems of our country could not 
have obtained the capital required to cover our land 
with a network of rails and could not carry freight 
and passengers at the low rates charged to-day. 

Without corporations, our manufacturers could 
not compete with the corporations of England, 
France, and Germany in the race for the Asiatic 
and the South American markets. 

The productive power of the people of the 
United States to-day far exceeds the consump- 
tive power, and the alternatives presented are: 
either to lessen production, diminish employment, 
and lower wages, or to obtain new markets and 
find new channels for the surplus products. 



The " Trust* ' Problem 53 

To extend our markets, and thereby provide 
an outlet for our surplus products and thus give 
constant employment to our workers and toilers, 
is the crying necessity of our economic life; and, 
in order to obtain these markets, foreign giant 
corporations must be met and conquered by more 
powerful and far greater aggregations of capital, 
organized in the form of corporations. 

Liability of Stockholders and Directors. — 
The stockholders and directors of corporations 
organized under the Corporation Bureau should be 
personally liable only to the following extent: 

The stockholders should be personally liable, 

(a) To creditors, to an amount equal to the 
amount unpaid on the stock held by each stock- 
holder. 

(b) To the laborers, servants, and employees 
other than contractors, for services performed by 
them for such corporation. 

The directors should be personally liable, 

(a) For declaring dividends from any fund other 
than from the surplus profits arising from the 
business of the corporation. 

(b) For loaning corporation money to any 
stockholder, or consenting to the corporation 
discounting any note or other evidence of debt of 
any stockholder. 

(c) For violating any of the provisions of this 
act or any law of the United States applicable to 
corporations. 



54 Vital American Problems 

The liability of stockholders and directors of 
corporations, except for violations of law or breach 
of trust, should be so limited as to deter no one 
from contributing his money to corporate enter- 
prises. The provisions of this plan provide suf- 
ficient protection to creditors and to the general 
public, and no additional burdens to those herein- 
before set forth need be placed on corporate stock- 
holders and corporate directors. 

Prospectus or Advertisement. — Every pros- 
pectus or advertisement issued or published 
with a view of obtaining subscriptions for shares 
or for bonds of a corporation, organized or to be 
organized by this Bureau, should give full details 
as to its organization; the contracts into which 
the promoters or organizers have entered; the 
earnings for the two previous years of all under- 
lying corporations; the amount of money to be 
used for preliminary expenses and the amount 
to be reserved for working capital ; and all informa- 
tion necessary for safe and intelligent investment. 
For a false statement, or the issuing of a pros- 
pectus which does not make a full disclosure of the 
corporate affairs, the promoters and their asso- 
ciates, the officers and their agents, should be 
legally liable, both civilly and criminally. This 
penalty would add greatly to the responsibility 
of directors, who should be men who direct, not 
dummy officials leading the trusting blind public 
to financial disaster. 



The "Trust" Problem 55 

This knowledge is at present inaccessible. The 
investor who puts money into a giant corporation 
must guess as best he can what property he 
is getting, and the guess is often a bad one for 
him. The making public of the above-mentioned 
facts will remove the gravest evils from stock- 
watering. If the investor knows that there is 
only one dollar of property back of every three 
dollars of stock and bonds, which is the case 
with so many corporations whose shares are 
listed on the exchanges to-day, he will be in a 
position to know at what figure to buy in order 
to make his investment safe. 

When appeals are made to the public to sub- 
scribe to the capital of undertakings, it should 
be made obligatory on the corporate promoters, 
organizers, and officers to disclose every fact known 
to them and unknown to the public, in order that 
everything be open and above board, and the 
promoters, officers and public alike, may act with 
equal information in regard to the organization and 
the conduct of such companies. 

Corporations now in existence and engaged in 
interstate or foreign trade, and desiring to obtain a 
charter from this Bureau, should furnish to the 
Commissioner a detailed history of its organization 
and an itemized list of its assets and liabilities, a 
summary statement of which should be published 
in such newspaper as may be designated by the 
Commissioner. By the possession of this report 



56 Vital American Problems 

the Bureau would be placed in a position whereby 
it could investigate intelligently the affairs of the 
corporation and be able rightly to supervise its 
future corporate life. 

Similar requirements conferring upon the pro- 
moters of industrial and railroad companies a high 
degree of responsibility for the accuracy of the 
representations contained in the prospectuses 
which they address to potential investors are 
contained in the "New Companies" Act adopted 
by the English Parliament in 1900. 

This Act prescribes eleven items of information 
which every prospectus shall contain and fixes 
penalties of fine or imprisonment, at the option of 
the courts, for wilful misstatement. Among the 
facts required to be stated in each prospectus are 
the number and amount of shares and bonds 
issued other than for cash, together with the con- 
sideration received for them; the amount paid or 
to be paid, in cash, shares, or otherwise, to each 
vendor of property purchased or to be purchased, 
with specifications showing each allowance for 
good-will ; the commissions paid or to be paid on 
subscriptions; and the amount of preliminary 
expenses and payments to promoters. Each 
prospectus must also give the dates of and the 
parties to each material contract and name a 
reasonable place and time for the inspection of the 
original or copies. 

Among the requirements as to promoters is one 



The "Trust" Problem 57 

that they shall not receive any commissions beyond 
those stated in the articles of association. 

The effect of this Act has been most beneficial in 
preventing the entrapping of the unwary by 
misleading or false statements. 

Annual Report. — Every corporation should 
annually, during the month of January, make 
and file with the corporation department a 
statement as of the first day of January, verified 
by the oath of its president or vice-president 
and its secretary or treasurer, fully setting forth 
the following information : 

(i) The name of the corporation and the place 
and date of its incorporation. 

(2) The names, residence, and business or 
occupation of the officers and directors of the 
corporation. 

(3) The business in which the corporation is 
actually engaged, and the States, territories, 
districts, or insular possession in which it is 
engaged in transacting such business, specifying a 
person residing in each such State and territory, 
who shall be designated by such corporation as its 
legal representative upon whom service of any 
legal process or notice issuing out of any court or of 
the corporation department may be made. 

(4) The cash value of the assets of the corpo- 
ration and the nature and character of such 
assets. 

(5) The amount of indebtedness of the cor- 



58 Vital American Problems 

poration, and, if such indebtedness is secured, 
in what manner. 

(6) A statement in detail of all bonds and 
mortgages issued by and outstanding against said 
corporation, showing when said bonds were issued, 
when the same become due, and the consideration 
received by the corporation for said bonds in 
property or money, and, if in property, the nature, 
situation, and cash value of such property; and in 
case of mortgages, a statement showing the date 
of such mortgages, the date of their maturity, the 
property covered thereby, and the cash value 
thereof. 

(7) The amount of shares of stock or bonds 
owned or controlled by said corporation in any 
other corporation, and the proportion of the 
entire capital stock which such holding represents, 
both in the reporting corporation and the cor- 
poration whose shares it holds. 

(8) The amount of assets and liabilities of any 
corporation in which such reporting corporation 
holds stock or bonds, giving the character of 
such assets and liabilities and of what such assets 
and liabilities consist. 

(9) The number of shares of the capital stock 
of the corporation which have been actually issued, 
and the amount and value of the consideration 
actually received into the treasury of the corpo- 
ration for such shares; where the payment was 
made in money, then the amount in money per 



The "Trust" Problem 59 

share ; where such payment was made in property, 
a description of such property as to location, 
character, and the cash value thereof. 

(10) That it is not a party to any contract or 
agreement for the purpose of, or which operates as, 
a restraint of trade or commerce, or which results 
in giving to either corporation a monopoly of 
trade in any article of common use or utility, 
or which results in any business or commercial 
advantage over other corporations or persons 
engaged in like trade, business, or commerce, by 
virtue of such agreement or contract. That it is 
not a party to any pooling plan, agreement, or 
contract with any other corporation for any pur- 
pose which, when carried into effect, would create 
a monopoly of the trade or business in which such 
corporation or corporations is engaged, or in any 
degree lessen or destroy competition between cor- 
porations or between corporations and natural 
persons engaged in business, trade, or commerce 
of a similar character. 

(11) That no part of the capital stock of the 
corporation is owned, controlled, or voted by any 
other corporation, or by the officers of any other 
corporation. 

(12) That the corporation does not and has 
not received any rebate, deduction, discrimination, 
drawback, preference, or advantage in rates of 
transportation or anything incident to such trans- 
portation from any common carrier — railroad, 



60 Vital American Problems 

pipe line, water carriers, or other transportation 
company — by which its products are or may be 
transported, which give to it any advantage or 
profit directly or indirectly as against any other 
person or corporation who ships or desires to 
ship products of a similar character over such 
transportation lines under fike conditions; or if 
any such have been received or given, then such 
corporation shall state when, from whom, on 
what account, and in what manner it was re- 
ceived, making a detailed exposition of the entire 
transaction. 

(13) If a corporation is a railroad or trans- 
portation company, or a common carrier of any 
kind, that during the past year it has not granted 
to any person or persons, corporation, or company, 
any special rates, discriminations, advantages, or 
preferences whatsoever; neither has it received 
any such. 

(14) The salaries of all officers of the corporation 
and whether or not any officer shares in the 
profits of the corporation, other than as stock- 
holder, or receives perquisites of any kind. 

If at any time a corporation, organized under 
the Federal government, shall fail to file its annual 
report as herein provided, or shall fail to give the 
information required, its officers should jointly and 
severally be personally liable to the United States 
in the sum of one thousand dollars per day for 
every day it transacts business; and if any such 



The "Trust*' Problem 61 

report shall contain a false statement in any 
material particular, the officers making such 
false statement should be deemed guilty of perjury 
and punished as provided in Section 5392 of 
the Revised Statutes of the United States. And 
whoever should knowingly prepare or cause to be 
prepared an answer that is false as aforesaid, 
should be deemed guilty of subornation of per- 
jury and be punished as provided in said Section 

539 2 - 
The object of compelling the making and filing 

of this annual report is to put on record under 
oath two of the officers of the corporation in 
order that the corporation department may have 
an additional hold on the responsible heads of the 
corporation for violation of law. The annual ex- 
amination hereinafter provided will enable the 
department to verify the correctness of the report 
and thus insure the truthfulness of the statements 
contained therein. 

Annual Examination. — The Commissioner or 
head of this Bureau, through his staff of examiners, 
should examine annually into the affairs of all 
corporations chartered by his department, inspect- 
ing their books, agreements, receipts, expenditures, 
vouchers, records of meetings of directors and of 
stockholders, and report the condition of their 
affairs as of the first of January of each year. 
Power should be given to compel the attend- 
ance of witnesses to be examined under oath, to 



62 Vital American Problems 

call experts to testify as to values, and to require 
the production of all books, papers, contracts, 
agreements, and documents relating to any sub- 
ject under investigation, no matter in whose 
possession or in what part of the United States 
or of its dependencies such documents may be. 
The claim that any such testimony or evidence, 
documentary or otherwise, may tend to criminate 
the person giving such evidence or testimony, or 
subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, should be 
met by a provision that no person should be 
prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or for- 
feiture for or on account of any transaction, 
matter, or thing, concerning which he may 
testify or produce evidence. But no person so 
testifying should be exempt from prosecution 
and punishment for perjury committed in so 
testifying. And if it should be found that a 
corporation is overcapitalized, or is violating 
any anti-trust or other law, the Commissioner of 
the corporation bureau, after giving to the cor- 
poration sixty days' written notice to comply 
with the laws, and the corporation having failed 
to rectify the wrong committed, should place the 
evidence in the hands of the Attorney-General, 
who should immediately commence an action to 
annul its charter. 

The Commissioner should also have the power 
to compel corporations to furnish, from time to 
time, such statements in regard to the conduct 



The "Trust" Problem 63 

of the corporate business, the change of stock 
interests, the financial condition of the company, 
and such other data as may, in his judgment, be 
deemed necessary to a complete understanding of 
the business and the condition of the corporation. 

A detailed report of the examination of the 
property, business, profits, and losses of every 
corporation chartered by this Bureau should be 
made each year and kept on file in the office of the 
Commissioner. A summary statement of the 
corporate assets and liabilities, the amount of 
stock issued and the amount paid thereon, in cash 
and otherwise, the actual amount of surplus, 
and the nature and mode in which it is used and 
invested, should be published in a government 
paper, designated for that purpose, and in one 
newspaper published in the county where the 
principal place of business of such corporation is 
located. The publication of such facts would 
in no wise injure the corporation, while the 
publication of a detailed report might paralyze or 
destroy the business done by corporations. 

It is well known that a corporation, just as a 
partnership or an individual in business, in some 
years makes money, in some loses money, and in 
others comes out even ; but in the average comes 
out ahead. 

If the creditors found at the end of a year that a 
corporation had lost money, how long would it 
be before the credit of that corporation would be 



64 Vital American Problems 

lost; how long before the banks would refuse to 
renew or to discount its paper ; how long before the 
creditors would place their claims in judgment 
and force the corporation into a receivership or 
into bankruptcy? 

Great care should be taken to protect amply 
the rights of privacy, while at the same time care 
should be exercised to protect the public by giving 
out such facts as they, as creditors, stockholders, 
and prospective investors, are entitled to know. 

Mr. Justice Brown in the so-called "Paper- 
Trust " case said: 

"The corporation is a creature of the State. It is 
presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the 
public. It receives certain special privileges and 
franchises and holds them subject to the laws of the 
State and the limitations of its charter. Its rights to 
act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long 
as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved 
right in the legislature to investigate its conduct 
and find out whether it has exceeded its powers. It 
would be a strange anomaly to hold that a State, 
having chartered a corporation to make use of certain 
franchises, could not, in the exercise of its sovereignty, 
inquire how those franchises had been employed and 
whether they had been abused, and demand the pro- 
duction of the corporate books and papers for that 
purpose. " 

The first concern of the government which 
grants charters of incorporation ought to be to 



The "Trust" Problem 65 

see that its corporate offspring are doing a legiti- 
mate business and are not violating any of the 
laws. Its second concern ought to be the giving 
to the public of all such information as should 
affect the reasonable judgment of a man in 
determining whether he should or should not 
invest in a particular enterprise. 

These obligations on the part of the government 
are universally recognized, but the means to be 
employed to effect these ends are still a matter 
of keen discussion. 

Experience has abundantly proved that it is not 
practicable to allow corporations to issue their 
own reports without the existence of a board of 
inspection to verify the truth of the statements 
contained therein. Such a plan of reporting, 
without such inspection and verification, has been 
tried by the various States, and the result has 
been that the reports, if not so meagre as to be 
of no practical value, are of so complex a nature 
that the majority of persons are incapable of 
understanding or properly appreciating them. 

As a matter of fact, a government board of 
examiners is absolutely indispensable for the 
realization of compulsory publicity. With such a 
board, the affairs of each corporation would 
become known, and the purchaser of bonds and 
of stocks could rely upon the corporation bureau 
to see that corporations were not overcapitalized, 
and that they were doing business honestly and 



66 Vital American Problems 

fairly and within the provisions of law. In this 
way the corporation, the purchaser of corporate 
bonds and of stocks, and the general public would 
be protected. 

If the so-called "tobacco," "leather," "whis- 
key," "ice," "sugar," and "shipbuilding" trusts 
had been subjected to the ordeal of a thorough 
investigation by expert accountants and their 
true financial condition laid before the public, a 
large number of serious losses would have been 
prevented from falling upon innocent and worthy 
people. The fact that industrials as well as rail- 
road and transportation companies are possessed 
of double attributes, of public and private nature 
combined, opens the way to abuse of official 
power. The favored few in the inner confidence 
of the managers have advantages in the general 
market to which they are not justly entitled. 

The investigation of the refunding committee 
of the Pacific railroads at Washington brought 
out the evidence from one of the principal witnesses 
that the books- connected with the construction 
of the roads had been burned or destroyed as 
useless trash, although they contained the record 
of transactions involving hundreds of millions of 
dollars, a record which became absolutely neces- 
sary to a fair settlement between the government 
and its debtors. There was put in evidence the 
fact that a certain party in interest had testified 
before another committee that he was present 



The "Trust" Problem 67 

when $54,000,000 of profits were divided equally 
among four partners — himself and three others. 
None of the books of record containing this 
valuable information escaped the flames. 

The investigation of various railroad corpo- 
rations has shown that some of the managements 
have peculiar methods, if not delinquencies, in 
bookkeeping, from which investigation it is evi- 
dent that if such corporations had received rigid 
examination and the guilty parties had been 
held responsible for their acts, many of the great 
railway corporations would not have been wrecked 
during the panic of 1893-95. 

Such annual inspection by a government board 
of examiners would prevent a repetition of these 
evils and would insure the correctness of published 
reports and prospectuses, and would prove a 
check on the discriminations which have built up 
or destroyed so many corporations. 

"Under the present industrial conditions," said 
former Corporation Commissioner, Mr. Garfield, 
"secrecy and dishonesty in promotion, overcapitali- 
zation, unfair and predatory competition, secrecy of 
corporate administration, and misleading or dishonest 
financial statements are generally recognized as the 
principal evils." 1 

If the corporate managers knew that the 
government might bring to light all their acts by 

1 Report of Bureau of Corporations, Dec, 1904. 



68 Vital American Problems 

an annual inspection, these evils would in a large 
measure disappear. 

This idea of governmental inspection has 
aroused a storm of protest from corporate man- 
agers, who insist that to place strong men in a posi- 
tion where they may be watched by government 
officers will not only humiliate them, but will 
limit their freedom of corporate action which is 
the secret of their power, and will destroy initiative 
and daring and will reduce all corporate manage- 
ment to the routine level of the conduct of savings- 
banks. These managers seem to forget that they 
are but the agents and trustees of the stockholders 
of the corporation, and that while occupying 
such positions, they have no right to take risks 
that are great or engage in undertakings which 
they know will, if discovered, bring governmental 
condemnation. 

Inspection will not discourage personal initiative 
when directed in legitimate channels; but it will 
lessen individual initiative when involving grave 
risks to the stockholders' money. 

Mr. Edward M. Shepard, in an address before 
the New Hampshire State Bar Association in 
1906, made this statement, the truth of which is 
unquestionable : 

"Those who are competent to manage these great 
functions of modern industry need not call secrecy to 
aid them in their competition with the incompetent. 



The " Trust" Problem 69 

There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few. 
The competent man need not fear — the true interests 
of civilization require — truth and the greatest possible 
publicity in every business, and especially in every 
business conducted under franchises given by public 
authority." 

The government which gives to a group 
of citizens a charter of incorporation, a special 
privilege, an advantage they did not possess as 
individuals, has the right to know that the 
privilege is not being used unfairly or illegally. 
If a corporation is legally organized and is con- 
ducting a legitimate business, no injury will be 
done it by inspection. 

Property Taxed Locally. — The real and tan- 
gible personal property owned by corporations 
chartered by this Bureau should be locally assessed 
and taxed in the civic divisions of the States in 
which the property is located, the same as the 
real and personal property owned by individuals. 
No higher or different rate of taxation and no 
other or different method of assessment should be 
applied to such corporations than is applied to 
corporations organized under the State law or to 
individual citizens. 

The reason for such local taxation is twofold: 
First, the local authorities have a better knowl- 
edge of the value of property and better facilities 
for obtaining this knowledge, and would, therefore, 
make fewer mistakes, than a board of examiners 



;o 



Vital American Problems 



appointed from Washington and not residents 
of the locality where such property is located. 
Second, the cities and counties of the States 
depend largely for their support upon the taxes 
levied upon the property of corporations located 
within their jurisdiction, and to withdraw this 
revenue would cause confusion and would increase 
the burdens of the local taxpayers. 

Tax on Profits. — A progressive graded tax 
should be levied on the actual net profits of 
corporations chartered by this department above 
eight per cent. Such tax might be graded as 
follows : 






i-io of 
i- 9 of 
i- 8 of 
i- 7 of 
i- 6 of 
i- 5 of 
i- 4 of 
i- 3 of 
i- 2 of 
6-io of 
7-10 of 
8-10 of 
9-10 of 



the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
the 
each 



1 st 
2d 

3d 

4th 

5th 

6th 

7th 

8th 

9th 

10th 

nth 

12th 



per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent. 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent, 
per cent. 



above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
above 
of profits above 



8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
8 per cent. 
20 per cent. 



Each corporation is rated according to the 
profits made. A corporate charter is valued 
solely by the prosperity of the corporation. 
A tax upon the net profits would be governed 
by actual results and be equal in its effect upon 









The "Trust" Problem 71 

different corporations, and be just in its general 
operation. 

"The value of the franchise from the economic 
point of view," declares Professor E. R. A. Seligman, 
"consists in the earning capacity of the corporation. 
That is the real basis of all taxation and can best be 
gauged by the amount of business done. 

"This is the most logical form of corporate tax- 
ation. The tax is not, like the gross earnings tax, 
unequal in its operation. It holds out no inducement, 
like the general property tax, to check improvements. 
It is just; it is simple; it is perfectly proportional 
to productive capacity. In short, it satisfies the 
requirements of a scientific system/ ' ! 

Whether or not a corporation had a special 
privilege, in the nature of a monopoly given by 
the patent laws, by the tariff, by a special franchise, 
or by the control of the markets, would make no 
difference in the laying of the tax. If a cor- 
poration possessed any of these privileges, it 
would be obliged to pay for each in proportion to 
its value, as evidenced by its earning power. 

A corporation should be permitted to earn a 
reasonable profit on its assets. If this per- 
mission were taken away, all incentive to carry 
on business would be killed, the affairs of cor- 
porations would be wound up, and the people 
would face general disaster, the like of which 
the world has never known. That the percentage 

1 Essays in Taxation, pp. 192, 198, 199. 



72 Vital American Problems 

of profits allowed untaxed should be liberal, in 
view of the risk taken by the investor, no one 
would question. While four per cent, may be the 
average value of capital, it is suggested that there 
should be an allowance untaxed of eight per cent, 
of actual net profits on the fair market value of 
the tangible assets of the corporation, as this 
percentage would be large enough to stimulate 
business and not so large as to work injustice 
between corporations chartered by this Bureau 
and corporations chartered by the various States. 
It is reasonable to assume that corporations will 
make all the profits they dare; and if there is 
placed a progressive graded tax upon their profits, 
their incentive to overcharge and increase their 
profits beyond a fair amount will be taken away; 
and their time, thought, and energy will be be- 
stowed in bettering the quality of their products, 
in extending their markets, and in holding their 
place in the business world. Franchises, special 
privileges, and tariff protection will not produce 
the valuable monopolies they are creating to-day, 
for upon the adoption of this plan of taxation 
the monopolies will not be allowed to yield the 
large profits that are now enjoyed. If a corporation 
has to pay as a tax 9-10 of each per cent, of 
profits above 20 per cent., it will not risk the 
losing of its trade for the sake of making so small 
a percentage of profit, and the people will get the 
benefit of a cheaper price and a better article. 



The "Trust" Problem 73 

Such a result might be reasonably expected if 
such taxes were applied to the profits of the 
Standard Oil Company. This company paid 
dividends in fourteen years, ending with 1895, 
amounting to $512,940,084, although the entire 
property, by the company's own valuation, was 
worth only $69,020,798 at the beginning of that 
period. And since 1895, the annual dividend 
has ranged from 33 to 48 per cent., besides the 
accumulation of a very large surplus. 

The testimony taken in the suit of the United 
States against the Standard Oil Company in 
New York City on September 18, 1907, brought 
to light the fact that the Standard Oil Company 
of Indiana paid in dividends the sum of $10,516,- 
082 on a capitalization of $1,000,000, or a little 
more than 1000%. If this plan of taxation had 
been in force in the State of Indiana in 1906, this 
company would have been obliged to pay as a 
tax the sum of $9,208,401.75; which would have 
left for dividends the sum of $1,240,609.20, or a 
little over 124%. This computation is based 
of course on the assumption that the actual 
value of the tangible assets of this company 
was in 1906 only $1,000,000. 

This tax, when assessed against a corporation, 
should be a first lien upon all the property and 
estate of the corporation. And if such tax should 
not be paid within thirty days after the same 
becomes due, the corporation should be re- 



74 Vital American Problems 

strained on the suit of the United States, brought 
by the Attorney-General, from engaging in inter- 
state commerce until such tax should be paid. 

Valuation of Assets. — In determining the 
actual net profits earned by a corporation, the 
board of examiners should annually ascertain 
the fair market value of the tangible assets of the 
corporation, not taking into consideration the 
franchises, the capital stock, or its bonds. 

This value may be obtained by an examination 
of the officers of the corporation, by inspection of 
its books, and by expert testimony. The Board 
should deduct from the total earnings of the 
corporation the necessary and reasonable expenses 
of its management, including the actual amounts 
spent in renewing the plant, the cost of materials 
purchased and used, and, in order to avoid double 
taxation, the taxes paid on its property to all States, 
counties, and municipalities. Having obtained 
these amounts, the board should, by ordinary 
business methods, figure the percentage of profits 
earned in relation to its corporate assets. 

Actions. — Corporations chartered by this de- 
partment should have the right to sue and to be 
sued in the Federal and in the State courts. 

By such a provision, centralization in the 
Federal judiciary will be avoided and the over- 
crowding of the Federal courts to the injury 
of litigants will be prevented. 

Departmental Expenses. — The cost of run- 



The " Trust " Problem 75 

ning the corporation bureau should be met in 
two ways: 

(a) By the incorporation tax. 

(b) By charging the various corporations exam- 
ined an amount sufficient to pay the salaries and 
the expenses of the corporate examiners. The 
amount charged would only be about fifteen 
dollars a day for the time spent by each exam- 
iner in investigating the affairs of a corporation. 

If the bureau were conducted on economical 
lines, a surplus ought to be obtained from the 
organization tax to go into the general fund; 
while the amount collected as a tax on profits 
could be used to reduce the general expenses of 
the government. 



IV 

FEASIBILITY OF PLAN 

WOULD THE ADOPTION OF THE FOREGOING PLAN TO 
TAX THE PROFITS OF CORPORATIONS ENGAGED 
IN INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE STOP 
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL PROGRESS? 
WOULD THIS TAX DETER MEN FROM IMPROV- 
ING THEIR METHODS, FROM INVENTING NEW 
LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY, AND FROM EM- 
PLOYING THE MOST EXPERIENCED AND SKIL- 
FUL MEN? 

FROM published statistics, it is safe to say that 
about seventy-five per cent, of the large cor- 
porations — industrial and railroad, — whose stocks 
are listed on the Exchanges, would, under the 
foregoing plan, be untaxed; and out of the 
remaining twenty-five per cent., about one half 
of them would be taxed but little, so it is impos- 
sible to conceive how this plan of taxation would 
vitally change conditions. This computation is 
based, however, on the present rate of earnings 
on the total capitalization of the corporations, 
and not on the actual assets of the corporations. 

76 



The "Trust" Problem 77 

If the corporations which would suffer most by 
this plan of taxation were to lag behind in the 
adoption of new machinery and new methods, 
how long would it take the awaiting capital to 
start competing industries? Natural business 
laws and economic conditions would take care 
of new inventions and new systems of carrying on 
business, and would assuredly reward the pioneers 
of progress. 

Such a tax would not be a tax on individual 
thrift, energy, or enterprise, but would be a tax 
upon the earnings of invested capital, over and 
above a fair return on the investment; and in 
view of the exemption of stockholders from per- 
sonal liability, and of the privilege of acting in a 
corporate capacity, such tax, levied proportion- 
ately, ought not to be considered an unjust burden. 

David Ames Wells has wisely said: "Com- 
mencing with first principles, the general taxation 
of incomes is theoretically one of the most equit- 
able, productive, and least exceptionable forms of 
taxation. ,,1 

Mr. Richard T. Ely says in regard to the justice 
and feasibility of an income tax : 

"It is universally, or almost universally, admitted 
that no tax is so just, provided it can be assessed 
fairly and collected without difficulty. More nearly 
than any other tax does it answer the requirements 
of that canon of taxation which prescribes equality of 

1 Theory and Practice of Taxation, p. 514. 



78 Vital American Problems 

sacrifice. Furthermore, it is of moment that the 
income tax, unlike license charges, does not make it 
more difficult for a poor man to begin business or to 
continue business. Its social effects, on the contrary, 
are beneficial, because it places a heavy load only on 
strong shoulders. Even for men of large means 
engaged in business it is a tax to be strongly recom- 
mended, for such men will in some years make little 
or nothing, or even lose money. Now, our property 
tax is merciless; it exacts as much in a year when a 
business man is struggling to keep his head above 
water as in a year of rare prosperity; whereas the 
income tax exacts much only when much can be 
given without financial embarrassment. ... It is 
the fairest tax ever devised ; it places a heavy burden 
when and where there is strength to bear it, and 
lightens the load in case of temporary or permanent 
weakness. . . . An income tax spares the business 
man in season of distress and helps him to weather the 
storm but asks a return for the consideration shown 
in days of increasing prosperity/' 1 

Such tax being levied on all corporations alike, 
no handicap would be placed on any corporation, 
but "would leave these enterprises respectively 
upon the small relative planes of competitive 
efficiency as before the levying of such taxes.' ' 2 

WOULD SUCH TAXATION STIFLE COMPETITION? 

Competition insures a constant reaching out for 

1 Taxation in American States and Cities, p. 288. 

2 Roswell C. McCrea "A Suggestion on the Taxation of Cor- 
porations, " vol. 19, Quarterly Journal of Economics, p. 493. 



The "Trust" Problem 79 

economies of production, for new devices for 
saving waste, and for lessening the expense of 
transportation of the crude and the finished 
product. Taxation of profits would prevent a 
monopoly from paying large dividends. The 
desire to obtain a monopoly, therefore, would be 
somewhat lessened. Whatever prevents a mon- 
opoly or lessens the desire to obtain a monopoly, 
necessarily opens the way to competitors and 
brings competition into existence. One of the 
objects of the foregoing plan is to keep com- 
petition alive by taking away the main advantage 
to be gained by owning a monopoly. 

WOULD THE ADOPTION OF THIS PLAN DESTROY 
CORPORATE LIFE, AND WOULD THE BUSINESS 
OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE BE CARRIED ON BY 
PARTNERSHIPS AND PERSONS ACTING IN THEIR 
INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY? 

The fundamental object of the foregoing plan is 
to welcome centralization; to permit factories 
and other industries to grow large and to combine 
and to consolidate, and to allow the free develop- 
ment of all honestly transacted commerce. Its 
aim is to put a stop to the abuse of power and the 
use of corporate life to injure society. 

Great enterprises would be promoted under its 
protection, without the evils of over-capitaliza- 
tion and over-speculation, and the comprehensive 
publicity without the disclosure of proper trade 



80 Vital American Problems 

secrets would make stability and strength the 
main features of corporate enterprises. 

Excessive capitalization is of no value to the 
corporation itself. Over-capitalization has been 
the main source of weakness of the large com- 
binations. Capitalization based on actual assets 
has been the plan adopted by small business 
corporations and has been the plan proved by 
experience to be the only sane, common-sense 
business plan. Over-capitalization is adopted 
solely for speculative purposes and not for business 
reasons, and, therefore, for the sake of the com- 
mercial and the industrial life of our land such 
practice should be prohibited. 

To regulate is to foster and not to annihilate. 

WOULD NOT THE ADOPTION OF THIS PLAN DESTROY 
THE PRACTICE OF "GAMBLING" IN INDUSTRIALS, 
WHICH IS SO PREVALENT TO-DAY? 

To a large extent, it would. The element of 
uncertainty arising from lack of exact knowledge 
as to the organization, the value of assets, the 
amount of liabilities, and the peculiarities of the 
management of corporations, which furnish the 
basis for speculation, would in a great measure be 
eliminated. The power of the managers of cor- 
porations to use the machinery of the business 
entrusted to their care so as to raise or lower 
the market price of the corporate securities to 
their individual enrichment, whether at the 



The "Trust" Problem 81 

expense of the stockholders of the corporation or 
of the innocent public, would be so curbed as to 
prevent them from doing harm. The buying and 
selling of stocks on margins by the people at 
large in the hope that the market price will change, 
a hope which is often founded on rumor, a toss of a 
coin or a dream — the only sources of information 
(?) obtainable to-day — would be greatly lessened, 
while the buying of bonds and stocks for invest- 
ment would largely increase. Bonds and stocks, 
when their actual value and their real dividend- 
paying ability are known, would become a favorite 
form of investment to the small as well as to the 
large investor, for a market price would, to a 
certain extent, be fixed which the buying public 
could safely depend upon. 

American investors are daily growing more 
suspicious of industrial stocks. They are express- 
ing a desire to know what they are buying; and 
stocks of corporations whose managers work in 
the dark, and publish no reports showing whether 
or not such corporations are honestly conducted, 
are beginning to be neglected. Only those stocks 
of corporations which publish full and clear re- 
ports, and which appear to be honestly managed, 
are finding favor with investors. 

WOULD THE TAX ON NET PROFITS FALL ON THE 
CONSUMER? 

Such tax would not lead to an increase of 

6 



82 Vital American Problems 

prices, with a view of imposing its burden upon 
the consumer, because the motive therefor would 
be removed by the progressive feature of the tax, 
since the greater the amount of the net profits, 
the greater would be the tax. Therefore, the bur- 
den of such a tax would not fall on the consumer. 
The holders of the stocks and bonds would be the 
only ones affected by this taxing feature. 

WHAT EFFECT WOULD THE ADOPTION OF THIS PLAN 
HAVE ON THE SO-CALLED ''HOLDING CORPORA- 
TIONS "? 

A fundamental principle of corporation law is 
that the corporation should be governed by its 
directors. The present practice of corporate 
control by a few men is to organize a " holding 
corporation' ' in one State and manufacturing and 
business corporations in other States, the majority 
of their stock being owned by the " holding 
company' ' whose directors conduct the affairs of 
all these branch or subsidiary corporations, which 
have "dummy" directors to fill the various 
offices. The effect of this system often involves a 
restraint of interstate trade which cannot be 
reached by the present laws. 

Another effect of this system is the evading of 
corporate taxation. Both of these evil conditions 
would be eradicated by the adoption of the fore- 
going plan of a national incorporation law. 



The "Trust" Problem 83 

WOULD NOT THIS PLAN OF TAXATION BE DEFEATED 
BY THE DIRECTORS OF CORPORATIONS PAYING 
TO THEMSELVES SALARIES SO LARGE AS TO KEEP 
THE PROFITS EARNED BELOW SIX PER CENT? 

In the case of small corporations whose stocks 
are not listed on the exchanges, it undoubtedly 
would. But it is not the small business corporation 
that needs special attention and drastic super- 
vision and control. It is the large corporations 
which own or control monopolies, and which have 
been favored by special laws or conditions and 
whose stocks are offered to the public as invest- 
ments, that sorely need regulation. And as these 
large corporations owe their existence to the 
money of the people which is invested in their 
bonds and stocks, their corporate managers would 
not dare to jeopardize their positions by paying 
exorbitant salaries to themselves, while to sell 
bonds and stocks profits must be made and 
dividends declared and these facts would ade- 
quately control their actions. 

"The danger is not very great," says Professor 
Seligman in discussing this question. " We hear of no 
complaints on this score in the American common- 
wealths where the net- receipts tax prevails; and in 
Europe, where this method of taxation is well-nigh 
universal, the objection has never been raised. It may 
thus be pronounced of little importance." 1 

1 E. R. A. Seligman, Essays in Taxation, p. 199. 



84 Vital American Problems 

HOW WOULD THE ADOPTION OF THIS PLAN OF 
TAXATION EFFECT THE QUESTION OF EQUALITY 
IN TAXATION? 

The report of the Wisconsin State Tax Commis- 
sion for 1903 contains these sentences: 

"The unmistakable importance of corporate tax- 
ation at this time renders the adoption of a rational, 
harmonious, and efficient system a prime necessity. 
The wealth of the country in personalty consists 
largely in investments in corporate securities, stocks 
and bonds in railroad and other corporations, which 
are not and cannot be reached for taxation to the 
holders by the severest and most inquisitorial laws. 
The taxation of corporations as legal entities is the 
only recourse. . . . 

The highest authorities on economic and public 
finance are of the opinion that the problem of just 
taxation in this country is very largely the problem 
of corporate taxation." 

In the case of Monroe County Savings Bank v. 
Rochester, the Court of Appeals of the State of 
New York declared : 

"All franchises are not of equal value. One cor- 
poration may enjoy a monopoly, and another be 
subject to competition with rivals, thus being less val- 
uable. In some instances, the value of the franchise 
would depend upon the nature of the business autho- 
rized, and the extent to which permission was given 
to multiply capital for its prosecution. Under such 



The " Trust M Problem 85 

circumstances, it would be expected that the Leg- 
islature would prescribe some equitable test or rule of 
valuation, which should guide or control the estimate 
of the assessors, in fixing the amount of the tax. It 
can hardly be denied that a fair measure of the value 
of the franchises of corporations would be the profits 
resulting from their use; and in adopting such a rule 
of estimate, no one could justly complain of its 
being unequal in its effect upon different corporations, 
or unjust in its general operation. ... If there are 
no surplus earnings, then there can be no tax; if 
there are such earnings, then it is reasonable to say 
that the privilege which produced them is valuable, 
and may justly be regarded as property subject to 
the taxing power. *" 

Justice Samuel F. Miller holds that a tax is 
uniform within the meaning of the constitutional 
requirement if it is made to bear the same per- 
centage over all the United States ; that is, it 
must be uniform as regards any particular arti- 
cles in all places, but that different articles may 
be subjected to different rates, provided they are 
uniform between different places and different 
States; as it obviously " could not have been 
the intent of the framers of the Constitution that 
the government in raising its revenues should 
not be allowed to discriminate in respect to 
articles which it desired to tax." 2 

* 37 New York Reports, p. 367. 

2 Lectures on the Constitution of the United States, pp. 
240, 241. 



86 Vital American Problems 

"Equality of taxation, as a maxim of politics, 
means equality of sacrifice/' said John Stuart Mill. 
"It means the apportioning the contribution of 
each person towards the expenses of the govern- 
ment so that he shall feel neither more nor less 
inconvenience from his share of the payment than 
every other person experiences from his." 

Professor Nicholson adds: "It is admitted 
that this standard cannot be completely realized; 
but it is thought to furnish a proper foundation 
for remission in some cases and for proportional 
increase of taxation in others." 

Therefore, the validity of the laying of the tax 
on net profits of all corporations chartered by 
Federal law, and doing an interstate and foreign 
business, could not be questioned. Such a tax 
would be proportional, certain, regular; and, 
therefore, ought to command assent without 
argument. 

DOES THIS PLAN OF TAXATION COME WITHIN THE 
FOUR CAXOXS LAID DOWN BY ADAM SMITH 
IX HIS ^WEALTH OF NATIONS, " WHICH ALL 
ECONOMIC STUDENTS HAVE ADOPTED AS OF 
UXQUESTIONED AUTHORITY? 

These principles are as follows : 

Canon i . "The subjects of every state ought to con- 
tribute to the support of the government, as nearly 
as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities — 
that is, in proportion to the revenue which they 



The " Trust" Problem 87 

respectively enjoy under the protection of the 
State. 91 

This plan recognizes the principle that the gov- 
ernment should allow to all its citizens a fair 
and reasonable income from investments. It 
further requires that the government's children 
should pay for the privileges conferred and 
the protection afforded in the measure of their 
value. The value of such privilege and protection 
can be fairly ascertained only by the net profits 
made. True it is that such measure of value 
takes no account of the wisdom, skill, and business 
acumen of the officers of the corporation, but no 
more equitable yardstick than this one has yet 
been found. By a graded progressive tax on 
net profits, the corporation pays a tax according 
to its ability and the benefits it derives from the 
governmental privilege and the protection it 
enjoys. 

Canon 2. "The tax which each individual is bound 
to pay ought to be certain and not arbitrary. The time 
of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity 
to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the 
contributor and to every other person. The certainty 
of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, 
of so great importance that a very considerable 
degree of inequality (I believe from the experience 
of all nations) is not near so great an evil as a very 
small degree of uncertainty." 



88 Vital American Problems 

This plan provides for a tax "certain and not 
arbitrary ": "The time of payment/ ' annually; 
"the manner of payment," clearly indicated; 
"the quantity to be paid," definite and certain 
according to table — which bring this plan directly 
within the requirements of this rule. 

Canon 3. " Every tax ought to be levied at the time 
and in the manner in which it is most likely to be 
convenient for the contributor to pay it." 

The fiscal year of practically all the corpora- 
tions existing in the United States begins and ends 
in the month of January. The annual inventory 
of practically all American corporations is com- 
pleted in January and it is during that month 
that the net profits of the year's business are 
ascertained and the dividends are declared. 
And it is in the month of January that, under the 
provisions of this plan, the tax is levied and the 
tax is required to be paid. No more convenient 
time, it is submitted, could be suggested for the 
ascertainment of the amount of the tax and for its 
payment. 

Canon 4. " Every tax ought to be so contrived as 
both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the 
people as little as possible over and above what it 
brings into the public treasury of the State." 

The two objects sought to be obtained from 
this plan of taxation are: First, to allow to 



The " Trust" Problem 89 

investors a sufficiently large income, untaxed, 
from their investments to induce them to continue 
to invest in corporate enterprises. Second, to tax 
all profits above a reasonable return on invest- 
ments so as to cause the corporate owners to 
prefer giving to the people a better class of goods 
to giving to the government large payments 
in taxes. In other words, this plan aims to 
compel corporate owners to give to the people 
more for their money, and by so doing make more 
secure the investments of Federal corporate 
stockholders. 

Finally, may it not be asserted that this plan 
comes squarely within the canons laid down by 
Adam Smith? 

WOULD NOT THE EFFECT OF THIS PLAN BE JUST 
AS FAR-REACHING AND JUST AS SATISFAC- 
TORY WITH THE TAXING ELEMENT LEFT OUT? 
WOULD NOT THE PUBLICITY OBTAINED BY THE 
FEDERAL INCORPORATION ACT, WITH AN ANNU- 
AL INSPECTION AND THE PUBLICATION OF A SUM- 
MARY STATEMENT, BE SUFFICIENT TO REACH 
THE EVILS OF EXTORTIONATE CHARGES AND 
EXORBITANT PROFITS? 

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has given 
an answer to these questions, in the reports of 
the Gas and Electric Light Commission. This 
Commission is empowered not only to inspect 
the books and examine into the affairs of gas 



90 Vital American Problems 

and electric light corporations doing business 
in the State, but also to control and regulate the 
prices to be charged for gas and light. The com- 
missioners are men of ability and have had several 
years of experience in inspecting, regulating, and 
controlling these quasi-public corporations. Yet, 
despite their efforts, with almost unlimited power 
under their control, the result can hardly be called 
satisfactory. 

The reports of this Commission may be sum- 
marized as follows : * 

Year Company Number Less than Dividends 









6% 


6% to 10% 


10% to 12%. 


No. 


1907 


Gas 


72 


10 


22 


1 9 


21 


1907 


Electric 














Light 


57 


8 


19 


5 


25 


1906 


Gas 


72 


12 


20 


I S 


25 


1906 


Electric 














Light 


59 


8 


1 9 


5 


27 


1905 


Gas 


76 


1 5 


22 


19 


20 


J 9°5 


Electric 














Light 


59 


6 


24 




29 


1904 


Gas 


75 


14 


27 


1 3 


21 


1904 


Electric 














Light 


55 


7 


24 


24 


24 



Publicity obtained by inspection and the 
publication of all the business affairs of corpora- 
tions is far from being a solution of this problem. 
Even when such inspection is coupled with the 
power to raise and reduce the prices to be charged 
to consumers, the result as evidenced by the 

1 Public Documents, No. 35, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908. 



The "Trust" Problem 91 

foregoing table is not equal to what is desired, 
and plainly indicates that the system of inspection 
and regulation fails to remedy the evils complained 
of. 

In so far as the law goes, it is entirely satis- 
factory, but it does not go far enough. Regula- 
tion by fixing prices will not be effectual; proper 
control and regulation by inspection alone will not 
be successful. Taxation of profits, coupled with 
inspection, is the only way by which prices can 
be controlled, monopolies curbed, and the public 
be protected. 

The adoption of the foregoing plan would 
probably secure the following results : 

(1) Protection to investors — by giving to them 
the facts upon which to base their judgment in 
purchasing bonds and stock; 

(2) Protection to competitors — by keeping the 
operations of corporations within the provisions 
of law; 

(3) Protection to consumers — by taking away 
the desire of corporate managers to obtain 
exorbitant prices ; 

(4) Protection to the public — by insuring 
sound business conditions. 



FREIGHT RATE PROBLEM 



93 



FREIGHT RATE PROBLEM 

THE years 1905 and 1906 witnessed the uprising 
of the American people in a united demand 
on the American Congress to enact a law em- 
powering a governmental commission to prepare 
the schedule of rates which railroads and other 
common carriers should charge for the transpor- 
tation of merchandise. The discussion of the 
question of giving to the Federal government 
additional control over carriers took the form of 
condemnation of rebates, drawbacks, and secret 
concessions; and the remedy proposed was the 
vesting of power in a Federal commission to equal- 
ize freight rates and to prevent extortionate 
charges. As a result of the popular demand, rein- 
forced by the energetic insistence of President 
Roosevelt, the Congress, on June 29th, 1906, 
passed the law popularly known as the Railway 
Rate Bill, being an Act to amend the Act entitled 
"An Act to Regulate Commerce." 

This Act was intended to extend the powers of 
the Interstate Commerce Commission over trans- 
portation companies, to strengthen the weaknesses 
of former acts which dealt with the subject of 

95 



96 Vital American Problems 

freight rates, and to enable the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission to enforce its decrees. 

Express and sleeping car companies, and pipe 
lines, other than those transporting water and 
gas, were brought under the provisions of the 
laws affecting common carriers. "All switches, 
spurs, tracks, and terminal facilities of every 
kind used or necessary in the transportation of 
persons or property, . . . and also all freight 
depots, yards, and grounds used or necessary in 
the transportation or delivery of said property/ ' 
were comprised under the term " railroad/ ' while 
the term "transportation/' which heretofore in- 
cluded "all instrumentalities of shipment or car- 
riage/' was enlarged so as to compass "cars and 
other vehicles . . . and facilities of shipment or 
carriage, irrespective of ownership or of any con- 
tract, express or implied, for the use thereof, and 
all services in connection with the receipt, de- 
livery, elevation and transfer in transit, ventila- 
tion, refrigeration, or icing, storage, and hauling 
of property transported"; and it was made "the 
duty of every common carrier subject to the pro- 
visions of this Act to provide and furnish such 
transportation upon reasonable request therefor, 
and to establish through routes and just and 
reasonable rates applicable thereto/ ' 

This Act required that all published tariffs 
should state separately terminal charges and 
charges for services which the carrier was to 



Freight Rate Problem 97 

supply. The initial carrier was also required to 
file and keep posted the rates from points upon 
its line to points on the routes of other carriers 
when a through rate and a joint rate shall have 
been established. Carriers were further required 
to file with the Commission copies of all contracts, 
agreements or arrangements with other carriers 
in relation to interstate traffic. 

The iniquitous so-called " after-dinner' ' and 
1 ' midnight' ' rates, which the carriers could put 
into effect under the law which permitted rates to 
be advanced upon ten days' notice and reduced 
upon three days' notice, are now prevented by 
the provisions which require a thirty days' notice 
to the Commission and to the public before rates 
can be changed, except when the Commission, 
in the exercise of its discretion, shall permit rates 
to be changed upon less than the legal notice, 
when the necessities of commerce require prompt 
action to be taken. 

An important feature is the power given the 
Commission to prescribe the manner in which rail- 
ways shall make their reports, the books the car- 
riers shall keep, and the system of recording 
accounts and other memoranda; and the Com- 
mission is given the right at any time to examine 
the books and records of the carrier. 

The main feature of the Act is the provision 
that upon complaint being made the Commission, 
"after full hearing" — if "it shall be of the opinion 



98 Vital American Problems 

that any of the acts, or charges whatsoever, de- 
manded, charged, or collected by any common 
carrier or carriers, subject to the provisions of this 
Act, for the transportation of persons or property, 
... or that any regulations or practices whatso- 
ever of such carrier or carriers affecting such 
rates, are unjust or unreasonable, or unjustly 
discriminatory, or unduly preferential or preju- 
dicial, or otherwise in violation of any of the 
provisions of this Act — to determine and prescribe 
what will be the just and reasonable rate or rates, 
charge or charges, to be thereafter observed in 
such case as the maximum to be charged; and 
what regulation or practice in respect to such 
transportation is just, fair, and reasonable to be 
thereafter followed; and to make an order that 
the carrier shall cease and desist from such vio- 
lation, to the extent to which the Commission 
find the same to exist, and shall not thereafter 
publish, demand, or collect any rate or charge 
for such transportation in excess of the maximum 
rate or charge so prescribed, and shall conform to 
the regulation or practice so prescribed/ ' 

The effect of this provision, however, is some- 
what limited by the closing words of this section, 
that all orders of the Commission shall take 
effect "unless the same shall be . . . suspended or 
set aside by a court of competent jurisdiction/ ' 

The remedial provisions of the law are one of 
its most vital and important features. Hereto- 



Freight Rate Problem 99 

fore, it was a grave question whether one carrier 
could complain of another carrier; but under this 
Act one carrier may file a complaint against an- 
other. Formerly, it became the duty of the 
Commission or any one interested, when the Com- 
mission's order had not been obeyed by the carrier 
within a reasonable time, to file a proceeding in a 
United States court to insure a compliance with 
the order. This procedure necessitated a finding 
by a court that the opinion of the Commission 
was just and equitable and that its order was legal. 
Now, the order having been made containing a 
date on which it must be obeyed, the intent of the 
Act is to make the order self-executing; failure to 
obey the order or requirement of the Commission 
subjects the defendant to a forfeiture of $5000 
per day, as well as court process at the instance 
of the Commission. In case the defendant shall 
feel aggrieved at the order of the Commission, it 
is given authority to file in a Circuit Court of the 
United States, a suit against the Commission to 
" enjoin, set aside, annul or suspend" the Com- 
mission's order. 

This Act goes as far in establishing governmental 
control of rates through an appointive adminis- 
trative and judicial body as the Constitution will 
permit. Whether or not the law is constitutional 
is a question which has been much debated by the 
foremost constitutional lawyers in the country, 
and the United States Supreme Court will un- 



ioo Vital American Problems 

doubtedly be called upon to render its decision in 
this matter at an early day. Even in the event 
of the Act being held to be unconstitutional, a 
tremendous stride has been made in the education 
of the people in the matter of extending the powers 
of the Federal government over the agencies en- 
gaged in interstate trade, and the passage of this 
Act will prove a stepping-stone to more advanced 
and more correct legislation. 

The cause of complaint on the part of the general 
public and the remedy adopted have but little in 
common. Railroad rebates are departures from 
fixed schedules of freight rates, and whether the 
rates be fixed by the railroads or by a govern- 
mental commission would in no wise affect the 
question of giving rebates or making secret 
concessions to favored shippers. A carrier could 
as easily favor one shipper at the expense of an- 
other when the schedule of carrying charges is 
made by a governmental commission as when 
published by the railroad itself. The bestowal 
of power upon the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion to equalize the rates to be charged by Am- 
erican railways, while an important step in the 
direction of Federal control over interstate com- 
merce, does not go far enough to reach the vital 
problem of eliminating the giving of rebates and 
the making of secret concessions to favored ship- 
pers. True, the Railway Rate Bill provides that 
the Interstate Commerce Commission may ex- 



Freight Rate Problem 101 

amine the books of carriers, and thereby it is ex- 
pected that light will be thrown on the corporate 
acts of common carriers. 

The non-enforcement of the various anti-trust 
and discriminatory laws has been due very largely 
to the fact that the government has been unable 
to obtain the evidence upon which the violators 
of the law could be convicted. The United States 
Attorney-General has been handicapped at every 
turn by his inability to examine the books of 
shippers in order to verify the statements in the 
books of carriers. Juggling of accounts is so 
easy to accomplish, by those who wish to hide 
their acts, that the examination of the books of 
carriers does not always disclose the violations 
of law that have been committed. Further, the 
practice among carriers of destroying their audit 
accounts every few months is a method of pro- 
tection which almost defies detection. 

The trial of the New York Central Railroad 
Company before the United States Circuit Court 
in 1906 brought to light the custom of this railroad 
of destroying its audit accounts every three 
months, so that its records would not prove em- 
barrassing upon investigation. 

Judge Holt in his decision in the action against 
the New York Central Railroad Company, said: 

"This crime [giving and receiving rebates] in its 
nature is one usually done with secrecy, and proof 
of which it is very difficult to obtain. The Interstate 



102 Vital American Problems 

Commerce Act was passed in 1887, nearly twenty 
years ago. Ever since that time complaint of the 
granting of rebates by railroads has been common, 
urgent, and insistent, and, although the Congress has 
repeatedly passed legislation endeavoring to put a 
stop to this evil, the difficulty of obtaining proof 
upon which to bring prosecution in these cases is so 
great that this is the first case that has ever been 
brought in this court, and, as I am informed, this case 
and one recently brought in Philadelphia are the only 
cases that have ever been brought in the eastern 
part of this country. In fact, but few cases of this kind 
have ever been brought in this country, east or west." 

Mr. James R. Garfield, former Commissioner 
of Corporations, in his annual report of December 
1st, 1906, says: 

"The work of the Bureau during the past years 
presents very strikingly the power of efficient publicity 
for the correction of corporate abuses wholly apart 
from the penal or remedial processes of the courts. 
No more convincing illustration of this power has been 
given than the experience of the Bureau in connection 
with the . . . system of railway discriminations in 
favor of the Standard Oil Company and the change 
of the system by its mere exposure. In most cases, 
as soon as the officers of railroads were aware that 
the agent of the Bureau had discovered a discrimi- 
nation, the improper rate was cancelled or the dis- 
crimination removed. This action on the part of 
the railroad officers was all the more striking in- 
asmuch as it could hardly have been taken with a 
view to escape from criminal liability, because that 



Freight Rate Problem 103 

criminal liability, if existing at all, had already been 
incurred and could not be mitigated or evaded by 
cancellation of the discriminatory rate or regulation ; 
and further, the fact of that voluntary action was a 
convincing admission of the unfairness of the rate or 
regulation. In short, the experience of the Bureau 
indicates that enforced publicity of facts is a most 
efficient measure of putting an end to such dis- 
criminations. ,, 

Rebates and discriminations are the products 
of darkness. The secrecy which surrounds the 
actions of transportation and industrial corporate 
managers, through the lack of governmental 
supervision and control, has enabled such officials 
to override the law and, to a large extent, to act 
according to their wishes and desires. 

Light — the white light of publicity— shining 
upon all corporate acts, is the crying necessity of 
the hour. Power to penetrate the corporate 
cloaks covering railroad and industrial corpora- 
tions and into the books of carriers and shippers 
should be possessed by the Federal government. 

The only adequate remedy is for the Federal 
government to have the power and authority to 
make unannounced, simultaneous examinations 
of the affairs of common carriers and of ship- 
ping corporations. This unheralded examination 
would undoubtedly bring to light all violations of 
the anti-trust and discriminatory laws. 

Under the new Railway Rate law the powers 



104 Vital American Problems 

of the Interstate Commerce Commission have 
been enlarged so as to enable the government to 
examine the books and records of railroad com- 
panies. By means of this law much of the 
darkness surrounding the dealings of railroad com- 
panies with the large industrial corporations has 
been dispelled; but the books of railroad com- 
panies are so complicated, and the accounts so 
juggled, that the examinations made by the Com- 
mission accomplish but little more than to create 
in the minds of railroad managers a fear lest some 
discovery of wrong-doing should be made. This 
fear has induced the abandonment of many of 
those practices liable to be discovered from an 
examination of the railroad companies' books, but 
it has left untouched those secret, insidious meth- 
ods by means of which the law is being evaded 
and the favored industrial corporations are reaping 
an unjust benefit. A long and important step 
has been taken to bring to light secret rebates, 
concessions, and discriminations, and but one 
additional step is necessary to be taken to banish 
forever those practices condemned by the Ameri- 
can people. 

With the exception of conferring this additional 
power on the government, the laws now on the stat- 
ute books provide sufficient substantive law and 
adequate administration machinery to cover the 
main grounds of complaint against common car- 
riers. No fuller or more complete prohibitive 



Freight Rate Problem 105 

statute for the suppression of rebates and secret 
discrimination could be enacted than those now in 
force; while the penalty provided by Sec. 5440 
of the Revised Statutes, which has never been 
enforced to correct the evils in transportation 
problems, and which provides in brief that if two 
or more parties enter into a conspiracy to give 
and to receive rebates or to violate any law of the 
United States the parties are liable to a fine and 
imprisonment for not more than two years, is of 
sufficient severity to meet all requirements. 

If the plan for Federal incorporation and Federal 
supervision of corporations engaged in interstate 
and foreign commerce outlined in the first part 
of this volume should be enacted, secret violations 
of anti-trust and discriminatory laws would be a 
thing of the past, while the fear of discovery would 
undoubtedly have the tendency to prevent vio- 
lations thereof. If, however, this ' plan failed to 
furnish the relief contemplated, the changed con- 
ditions resulting therefrom would undoubtedly 
suggest remedies which could be enacted without 
causing the tremendous upheaval attendant on 
the passage of the Railway Rate Bill. 



GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP 



I07 



THE PROBLEM 

THE recent exposure of the practice of corpora- 
tions in obtaining from municipal councils 
and legislative assemblies valuable franchises by- 
means of secret bribes, has aroused the American 
public to seriously consider the advisability of 
municipal and State ownership of such public 
utilities as surface, underground, and elevated 
railroads, telephone, telegraph, and lighting fran- 
chises, and the business of supplying communities 
with gas and water. 

Not only do corporations obtain without pay 
franchises of the value of millions of dollars, but, 
not content with a fair return on the value of such 
franchises for which they paid nothing, the owners 
thereof have almost invariably over-capitalized 
the companies so as to necessitate the charging 
to the public of an excessive price for the use of 
such franchises. 

The facts recently brought to light in regard 
to the over-capitalization of individual street rail- 
way companies have astounded the public. The 

109 



no Vital American Problems 

history of the consolidations and reorganizations 
by which the railway systems of most of our great 
cities have been welded together is filled with 
evidence of stock- watering. 

In New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg the 
process of combination and reorganization has 
been repeated several times, with the result that 
the stocks and bonds have grown more inflated 
with each change. From the careful estimates 
made by competent engineers regarding the cost 
of construction of street railways, it is probably 
safe to say that the present electric surface rail- 
ways in our large cities could be completely re- 
produced in their present style at a cost of not 
more than $60,000 per mile of track, although the 
average capitalization of these railways is $182,775 
per mile, or three times their cost. This condi- 
tion, to a very large extent, prevails in all cor- 
porations owning natural monopolies. 

It has been suggested and much elaborate argu- 
ment has been wasted in the vain effort to show 
that competition could be obtained in these 
monopolies under all conditions. But the fact 
remains that when an attempt has been made to 
put such argument into practice by the organiza- 
tion of rival corporations, the result has inevitably 
been that within a short period the rival com- 
panies entered into an agreement as to prices, or 
divided the field, or consolidated, and the dream 



Government Ownership m 

of getting lower prices through competition of part 
owners of a natural monopoly came to naught. 

The West Shore Railroad, which was called into 
existence by the high dividends paid by the New 
York Central, found that, though parallel to the 
New York Central, its route was not equal to 
the one chosen by its predecessor, which had the 
first choice of position; and as its capital and 
equipment were less than those possessed by its 
rival, and as the Central immediately reduced 
charges to meet its cut rates, the West Shore soon 
became unable to bear its losses, and finally sold 
out to the Central at a low price. 

The Nickel Plate road, paralleling the Lake 
Shore from Buffalo to Chicago, had a similar ca- 
reer and a like ending. 

Cities may be named by the score that have 
witnessed the attempts at competition. In every 
one of these monopolistic industries, with the ex- 
ception of the telephone service, not a single case 
can be mentioned that has been on trial for any 
length of time and has not ended with consolidation 
or division of territory or some agreement to put 
an end to competition. Though the public enjoys 
temporary low prices while the war of rates is 
being fought, the price after the consolidation 
is effected, if not raised above the old figures, is 
seldom made lower than the prices charged before 
the competition began. 



ii2 Vital American Problems 

Experience in the United States has proved that 
competition in natural monopolies for any con- 
siderable length of time is impossible of attain- 
ment. Because of this fact many thoughtful 
people have come to insist that the only solution 
of this problem is to be found in public ownership 
and operation of these monopolies. 

The advocates of government ownership, in the 
cases where no power of revoking the franchise 
has been reserved, favor the government's buying 
the assets of the corporation owning these fran- 
chises, if the corporation will sell at a reasonable 
price; and if the corporation will not sell, for the 
government to build and construct a plant and 
enter into competition with the avowed object of 
4 'freezing out" its competitor. 

The difficulty with the plan for purchasing the 
assets of the corporation owning a franchise would 
be to determine the value of the franchise. To 
purchase the franchise and plant on the valuation 
fixed according to its earning power would be too 
hazardous a speculation, as it would be impossible 
to ascertain if under the administration of public 
officials the business could be as economically 
managed as under the administration of well-paid 
expert business men; to purchase the franchise 
and plant on the basis of the amount it would cost 
to reproduce the plant, would be unfair and unjust, 
for the government, after allowing and encouraging 
the original grantees of the franchise to dispose 



Government Ownership 113 

of it to innocent stockholders on a valuation 
based on its earning power, ought not to compel 
its return on a different valuation ; to do so would 
deter business men from investing their money in 
any enterprise of a public or quasi-public nature, 
by the fear that, as soon as their capital was 
earning a fair rate of interest, not only their 
dividends, but their capital itself, or a part thereof, 
might be taken from them. 

Not only would prospective investors be de- 
terred by this fear, but they would hesitate 
about investing in these securities because of 
the crippling policy so often pursued by munici- 
palities in their attempts to purchase private 
enterprises, a policy effectively illustrated by 
Mr. Dixon in an address before the Society of 
Arts: 

" There are certain industries which involve an 
amount of interference with public rights. These, it 
is suggested, cannot be properly kept under control, 
and therefore the only alternative to disorder is to 
have them municipally administered. The truth is 
that the authorities are so infected with the idea of 
acquiring them that they do not honestly try to 
regulate them. Their policy produces a reactive 
tendency in the same direction on the part of the 
companies. A gas company or a tramway company 
sees expropriation looming through the fog of local 
controversy. Its conductors do not see why the 
authorities should choose their own time for the 



ii4 Vital American Problems 

purchase, and, therefore, they themselves aggravate 
the situation in order to hasten the decision of the 
authority to buy out the company at the precise 
moment when it will suit them — in view of the 
depreciated state of its undertaking and of the capital 
difficulties ahead — to part with the concern. If the 
policy of acquisition were definitely abandoned, the 
authorities would be able to enforce a much more 
effective system of control." 

Then, again, there is the danger to the munici- 
pality arising out of the discussion of the terms of 
sale, as illustrated in the case of the borough of 
Marylebone in London, when a few years ago it 
attempted to purchase the electric supply of this 
borough from the Metropolitan Electric Supply 
Co., a private company. The company offered 
to sell for $4,500,000, which sum the municipality 
refused to pay, but sent the matter to arbitration, 
spent about $300,000 in law costs, and was finally 
called upon to pay over $6,000,000 to the com- 
pany. Thus, at the very beginning of the 
enterprise, the ratepayers were saddled with an 
absolutely unnecessary charge of $1,500,000, on 
every cent of which interest and sinking fund 
charges have to be paid. 

The main objection to the municipality or State 
owning and operating these franchises is to be 
found in the fact that only in exceptional localities 
in the United States and under exceptional condi- 
tions have public officials been able to operate a 



Government Ownership 115 

franchise as successfully and as economically as 
has been done by private corporations. 

" Those who are engaged in commerce and manu- 
factures/ ' says Lord Avebury, who speaks with much 
authority, " know very well that the difference be- 
tween profit and loss depends on close attention to 
details, on the careful selection of the staff, on the 
devotion of labor, thought, and time to the business. 
It is impossible to suppose that governments or 
municipalities can give the same amount of attention 
as those whose income and prosperity, and the welfare 
of those near and dear to them, depend upon the 
success of their exertions. It is evident that in work 
done by the government or by local authorities 
there is not the same stimulus to exertion and econ- 
omy, so that one of two things will almost inevit- 
ably happen — either there will be a loss, or the service 
will not be so good." 1 

The history of the Northern tramway lines 
before they passed into the control of the London 
City Council illustrates the unprofitableness of 
municipal ownership : 

"The Council now [1906] owns ninety-nine miles 
of tramways, namely: fifty-one miles on the Surrey 
side of the river — the Southern lines; and forty-eight 
miles on the Middlesex side — the Northern lines, the 
latter, up to April of 1906, worked by the Metropolitan 
Tramway Company on a lease from the Council now 

1 On Municipal and National Trading, p. 56. 



n6 Vital American Problems 

extinguished. From 1894 up to March 31, 1906, 
the profits realized from both systems which were 
applied to the relief of taxation — the Southern, be it 
remembered, operated by the Council, and the 
Northern leased to and operated by a company — have 
amounted to $1,467,960. This is the record for the 
twelve years in which the Council has been interested 
in tramways. The total earnings of the Southern and 
Northern systems in this period totalled $1,634,905, 
of which $1,571,685, or 96 per cent., was earned by 
private enterprise. Since 1900 the Council has 
earned from the Southern system, which it operates 
itself, a sum of $119,545, while from the Northern 
system, operated by a company, the taxpayers receive 
no less than $957,975. It is apparent, therefore, that 
had the County Council leased the Southern system 
also to a company, instead of working it themselves, 
London taxpayers would have gained something like 
$840,000. Even the small profit the Council has 
obtained from the Southern lines has only been 
possible by setting aside a wholly inadequate sum 
for depreciation — only 1.1 per cent, on the capital. 
The Council's own expert has admitted that if two 
cents per car mile for renewal, which had been 
allowed in previous years, had still been maintained, 
there would have been a loss of $20,000 instead of a 
profit of that figure for 1905-6." ! 

The British Municipal Year Book for 1906 
gives the following results of the year's (1904-5) 
working of a number of municipal undertakings: 

1 Dangers of Municipal Ownership, by R. P. Porter, pp. 
219—220. 



Government Ownership 117 

"Of 378 water-works, 252 showed no profits. 

"Of 177 gas-works, 40 showed no profit, and 48 
of those which did were not applied in the relief of 
taxation, so that the taxpayers of 88 towns out of 177 
obtained no benefit from municipal gas. 

"Of fifty-eight street railway systems, thirteen 
showed no profit, and thirty-five of those which 
did were not applied in relief of taxation, so that 
the taxpayers of forty-eight towns out of fifty- 
eight obtained no benefit from municipal street- 
railways. 

"Of 189 electricity-works, sixty-four showed no 
profit, and ninety-two of those which did were not 
applied in relief of taxation, so that the taxpayers 
of 156 towns out of 189 obtained no benefit through 
municipal electricity supply. 

"A proper allowance for depreciation would wipe 
out these small profits [says Mr. Robert P. Porter]. 
In almost every case where a profit is shown from 
electricity-works, it is arrived at only by ignoring or 
inadequately recognizing depreciation and other items, 
which are juggled with in order that, by hook or by 
crook, a surplus can be squeezed out of the elastic 
figures. ,,1 

"When the telegraphs were taken over from the 
Companies by the government of Great Britain in 
1870, the profit in that year on company working 
was $1,692,500. The following years show what has 
happened since (all the years are not given, but those 
omitted tell the same story) 2 : 

1 Dangers of Municipal Ownership, p. 234. 

2 Dangers of Municipal Ownership, by R. P. Porter, p. 303. 



n8 Vital American Problems 

" Annual Deficits on State Operation of the British 
Telegraph System: 

Deficit Percentage of expenditures to 
gross receipts 

1883-4 $ 98,485 101.10 % 

1884-5 181,850 102.03 % 

1885-6 225,685 102.52 % 

1886-7 627,185 107.70 % 

1900-01 1,688,205 109.76 % 

1901-02 3,259,405 118.26 % 

1902-03 3>°°8,555 116. 16 % 

1903-04 4,788,915 125.64 % 

1904-05 5>955>03o 125 %" 

According to the Statesman' s Year Book in 
Switzerland for 1906 the deficit in 1904 in 
government-operated telegraphs and telephones 
amounted to $136,633. 

The unfortunate fact must not be overlooked 
that public ownership has a great foe to face in 
the spoils system. While a rational civil service 
would undoubtedly overcome to some extent this 
great evil, it is reasonable to assume that corrup- 
tion will be sufficiently rampant to do away with 
the profits of the undertaking. Until American 
city and State governments are purged of dis- 
honest officials, it is unsafe to place in their hands 
the additional opportunity for stealing which 
would arise under municipal and State ownership 
of natural monopolies. 

The present-day government officials are in 
many instances so ignorant or so corrupt that 



Government Ownership 119 

they have granted franchises for practically no 
consideration and have failed in almost every point 
to protect the interests of the public. They have 
neglected to enforce such requirements as the 
franchises did contain in the interests of the people 
and have perverted such powers as the franchises 
did grant and made them the means of levying 
blackmail upon the corporations. With such con- 
ditions existing, could the public expect any- 
thing better if these city officials were given the 
power to operate these franchises? That the 
city governments are too corrupt and inefficient 
to carry on business on purely business lines is 
plainly evident to all observers. 

For many years the city of Philadelphia owned 
and operated its gas-works, with the result of 
high prices, poor service, and the gradual develop- 
ment of a political ring which robbed the city and 
practically dominated its politics. This condition 
grew so intolerable ten years ago that public- 
spirited citizens organized a committee known as 
the Committee of One Hundred, which dared the 
power of the gas ring, exposed its shameful record, 
and compelled the city to lease the works to the 
United Gas Improvement Company. Professor 
Boyce says that this ring controlled no less than 
20,000 votes, using them most effectively to pro- 
long its corrupt rule. The result of the lease to 
the United Gas Improvement Company has been 
to improve the service, lower the price, and give 



i2«o Vital American Problems 

to the city a yearly revenue of $650,000, as against 
an average yearly deficit under the city manage- 
ment of $239,000. 

The experience of Boston a few years ago further 
illustrates the difficulty of municipal ownership 
under our present system of municipal govern- 
ment. Under Mayor Quincy, a number of new 
municipal bureaus or departments were created, 
through which the city undertook to do its own 
printing, electrical construction, carpentering, 
repairing, and furnishing of its own ice. Under 
the succeeding administration of Mayor Hart 
it was found that they were an unwarranted 
drain on the public treasury and they were closed 
up as fast as possible. According to Mr. Hayes 
Robbins it was found "that the electrical equip- 
ment of a ferry-boat, which under private con- 
tract would have cost only $6800, cost $10,200. 
Electrical work in the city building for hospital 
nurses cost $4754; by private contract it would 
have been $1528. Work on a city armory, which 
normally would have cost $2600, absorbed $6700 
of the city's funds. Ice for public drinking-foun- 
tains, which private companies were furnishing at 
$2 and $3 per ton, was costing the city $6. M1 

These bureaus were in the hands of political 
appointees who were, as a rule, individually incom- 
petent and who were giving to the city as little 
service as was possible. The civil-service regula- 

1 Am. Journal of Sociology, p. 805. 



Government Ownership 121 

tions furnished but little protection to the public, 
for as rapidly as the rules were extended to cover 
the different classes of employees, the "city 
fathers' ' would create new positions or give to the 
old positions new names for which no civil-service 
examinations existed. 

The efficiency of civil service to select men best 
fitted for industrial work has been seriously ques- 
tioned by all who have studied the results obtained 
in the fields calling for the highest standard of 
industrial efficiency. The conditions of success 
in different fields in different places, according to 
the situation, character of the market, previous 
traditions of the business, etc., vary so greatly 
that what might be regarded as essential business 
principles in one situation, and made the basis 
of a general competitive examination, might be 
entirely inadequate to select the right men in 
another situation. And it might be questioned 
whether some of the most successful managers of 
modern industries could themselves pass an ex- 
amination such as might be considered proper by 
the examining board. 

Mr. C. M. Keyes, formerly railroad editor of 
The Wall Street Journal, has stated that the net 
result of Missouri's experiment in State owner- 
ship of railroads is "a loss of nearly $25,000,000/' 
while as to the Pennsylvania experiment Mr. 
Keyes says: 

"After more than twenty years of hard experience, 



122 Vital American Problems 

Pennsylvania grimly pocketed its loss of over $20,000,- 
000, and turned its back forever upon the gospel of 
State ownership of railroads.' ' 1 

Mr. William Bender Wilson, historian of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, in speaking of the political 
conditions which arose under the experiment of 
Pennsylvania in owning and operating railroads, 
said : 

"The individual transporter who did not dance 
when the politician in charge of traffic piped was 
placed at a great disadvantage. His cars were not 
moved until after his competitor, who was a partisan, 
reached market; classifications were interpreted 
against him, and his cars were condemned by inspect- 
ors; every effort was made to compel his adherence, 
failing in which he was run out of business or badly 
crippled. 

"The free-pass system originated on the State 
works, and grew out* of the assumption by public 
officials that they had a right to pass over the public 
highways, in going to and from the capital, free of 
tolls. County officials soon claimed that they were 
entitled to the same immunity in going to and from 
their respective county towns, and political hangers- 
on .. . enrolled themselves under the banner of 
free transportation. 

"It became a potent factor in corruption, and 
reached such an extent that transporters who would 

1 " State Ownership of Railroads/' World's Work, Dec., 
1906, p. 8337. 



Government Ownership 123 

do certain political work at an election would have 
their tolls rebated to an extent that nearly always 
reached a refund of the entire amount paid. The 
State debt grew and grew, until bankruptcy stared 
the people in the face/' 1 

Hon. George A. Loud, in speaking before the 
United States House of Representatives in Decem- 
ber, 1906, said in regard to the government navy- 
yard, which is controlled by the most conservative 
men in public life, men who are without the pale of 
the stress and struggle of the political arena : 

" I have found, in my study of this administration, 
a concrete example of what it means to manufacture 
material in the government navy-yards as compared 
with what it would cost to buy the same material 
of equal quality upon the open market. 

"I take, first, the subject of anchors manufactured 
during last year, and I find the output was 605,483 
pounds, costing $81,564.12, or 13^ cents a pound. 
The cost of anchors of private make, according to a 
statement of Admiral Manney, is 5^ cents for anchors 
under 1000 pounds, and 6 to 8^ cents for anchors over 
1000 pounds. I have further information on this 
subject from the Department of Commerce and 
Labor, Lighthouse Establishment, who paid for 
forged fluke anchors 5! to 6 cents per pound; also 
that forged stockless anchors cost 6 cents a pound. 
The Newport News Shipbuilding Company, in a 
letter of March 9, state: 

1 " State Ownership of Railroads," World's Work, Dec, 

1906, p. 8337. 



124 Vital American Problems 

"'With regard to anchors, I beg to say that, while 
the price varies with market conditions, from 7 to 7 \ 
cents per pound would be a fair average to figure for 
anchors.' 

"From a letter of the Treasury Department Rev- 
enue Cutter Service, dated March 15, I am advised 
that they have paid from 4I to 6^ cents per pound 
for forged anchors. 

"I find that one of the largest ship-building com- 
panies in the United States, who lately constructed 
ships for the Lighthouse Service, furnished forged 
anchors weighing 11,925 pounds, costing $4.98 per 
hundred pounds, or practically 5 cents per pound, 
while the cost of anchors made by the Navy De- 
partment, shown by report of Bureau of Equipment, 
is 13^ cents per pound. 

"I find that Admiral Manney gives the cost of 
an 8000-pound anchor of the factory at Boston at 
$17.65 a hundred; one of 14,500 pounds at $15.39 
per hundred, which makes the relative cost in these 
instances 5 cents furnished the government light- 
house boats as against 16 cents for the government 
navy manufacture. As forged anchors have become 
nearly obsolete, because of steel stockless anchors be- 
ing used instead, I have not very much data on the 
subject of forged anchors. The cost of steel anchors 
is shown to be about 4 cents a pound. 

"Half-inch chain cable, 2628 pounds, cost $632.78, 
showing a cost per pound of 24 cents; five-eighths-inch 
cable, 2887 pounds, costing $793.01; showing a cost 
per pound of 27 \ cents, the highest market quotation 
of these sizes running from the common chain, $3.60 
per hundred, to the highest grade, $8.40 per 100 



Government Ownership 125 

pounds, for half -inch chain; and in this connection 
I will say that the purchasing department of the 
Isthmian Canal, on April 28, purchased three-eighths- 
inch straight short-link iron chain at $3.94 per hun- 
dred pounds, delivered on the dock at Colon. The 
whole amount involved in the business of making 
these one-half- and five-eighths-inch chains is so small 
it is of little importance; nevertheless it shows the 
expense of government manufacture to be abnormally- 
large; that is, the cost at the government factory 
being three times the market price of private-make 
chain of the very highest quality. I will add to the 
above information that the market price quoted 
for the best special hand-made dredge chain is 
$8.40 per 100 pounds for half-inch and $7.40 for five- 
eighths-inch. . . . 

"What I have brought this together for is the 
concrete example of what it means to manufacture 
goods in government institutions. I have taken 
this, which is, perhaps, a small item, but it appealed 
to me as something I knew something about. I 
know something about cordage; I know something 
about chains, as I have used them all my life in my 
business, and I know that I can buy in the open 
market the chain and the anchor and material of 
that kind and equal quality at one half of what they 
cost in government manufacture." 

The important question for each citizen to con- 
sider in his study of municipal ownership is 
whether his municipality may succeed in the 
management of a given industry by procuring 



126 Vital American Problems 

agents who will manage the industry with econ- 
omy, efficiency and fidelity. The answer may be 
found in the examination of the way in which the 
various departments of the municipality have 
been and are conducted, and the qualification of 
the officials to manage an enterprise the success 
of which largely depends on executive ability, 
commercial judgment, and technical skill. 

The continual shifting of political parties and of 
the men in influence in the same party has pre- 
vented the development in our cities of a corps 
of municipal employees who can feel confident 
that faithful work will bring permanence of tenure, 
and that greater ability will insure more rapid 
advancement. The weakening effect of short 
terms and insecure tenure of office is evident in all 
ranks of the service, from the heads of depart- 
ments to the day laborers. 

The security of the office-holder's position de- 
pends rather upon his loyalty and services to the 
political party than to the city's interest. His 
political activity therefore becomes more im- 
portant in his eyes than his official duties, and 
this attitude inevitably tends to a disposition 
to shirk his responsibilities. 

Since municipal offices and the patronage con- 
nected therewith constitute the chief legitimate 
reward for political service, first-class competent 
men are not only barred, but, as a rule, they 
will not seek for public service, as better oppor- 



Government Ownership 127 

tunities are obtainable in the field of private 
enterprises. 

The evil influence of corporations in politics 
will not be eliminated by public ownership. Poli- 
tics are not removed by placing the management 
of enterprises in the hands of politicians. 

President Hadley has well said : 

" While there is a fundamental reform in the code 
of political ethics which the community imposes upon 
its members, public trusts will be no more adequately 
controlled than private ones. Nay, they are likely 
to be even less adequately controlled, because a public 
official, holding his powers as a tool of a ring, and 
acknowledging no allegiance to standards higher 
than those which have made his organization success- 
ful, is as a rule more firmly intrenched in authority 
than the representative of any private corporation, 
however extensive and powerful. Until such a change 
is made the social ideal of reforming abuse of private 
trust by the substitution of public trust will be but a 
substitution of one set of masters for another/ ' 

Mr. James Dalrymple, Glasgow's managing 
expert of tramways, who was brought to the 
United States in 1905 by the mayor of Chicago 
and the Municipal League of New York, "as the 
high apostle of municipal-run street railways, " to 
investigate conditions in Chicago and New York, 
said on his arrival : 

"I see no reason why Chicago, or any other city 



128 Vital American Problems 

in this country, should not be able to own its street 
railways, and to run them with as much success as we 
have reached at Glasgow. I admit that the proposition 
at Chicago is a much larger one than the one we had 
to tackle, but at the bottom it is the same. The peo- 
ple of Glasgow would not go back to the old days of 
private ownership for anything in the world. I am 
not saying that a company would not do as well by 
the public. I know, in fact, that it could, but it 
would be doing so with a somewhat different end in 
view. For a company has always the shareholders 
to consider. And I have to admit that you will 
find people in Glasgow to-day — quite influential peo- 
ple too — who say that the street car service is not 
profitable." 

After a careful investigation of the conditions 
existing in American cities, Mr. Dalrymple de- 
clared on his departure: 

A 

"To put street railroads, gas-works, telephone 
companies, etc., under municipal ownership would be 
to create a political machine in every large city that 
would be simply impregnable. These political ma- 
chines are already strong enough with their control 
of policemen, firemen, and other office-holders. If in 
addition to this they could control the thousands 
of men employed in the great public-utility corpo- 
rations, the political machines would have a power 
that could not be overthrown. I came to this country 
a believer in public ownership. What I have seen 
here — and I have studied the situation carefully 
makes me realize that private ownership under 



Government Ownership 129 

proper conditions is far better for the citizens of 
American cities." 

To what end does this municipalization of 
industries tend? Glasgow furnishes a partial 
answer. There 

"a citizen may live in a municipal house. He may 
walk along the municipal street, or ride on the 
municipal tram-car, and watch the municipal dust- 
cart collecting the refuse which is to be used to 
fertilize the municipal farm. Then he may turn into 
the municipal market, buy a steak from an animal 
killed in the municipal slaughter-house, and cook 
it by the municipal gas on the municipal gas-stove. 
For his recreation he can choose amongst municipal 
libraries, municipal art galleries, and municipal 
music in the municipal parks. Should he fall ill, he 
can ring up his doctor through the municipal tele- 
phone, or he may be taken to the municipal hospital 
on the municipal ambulance by a municipal policeman. 
Should he be so unfortunate as to get on fire, he will 
be put out by a municipal fireman, using municipal 
water; after which he will, perhaps, forego the 
enjoyment of a municipal bath, though he may find 
it necessary to get a new suit in the municipal old- 
clothes market." 1 

The London Times, in reviewing the ten- 
dencies of municipal ownership in that city, 
declares : 

1 R. E. C. Long, Fortnightly Review , January, 1903. 



130 Vital American Problems 

"In every municipality there will be a large body 
of voters and ratepayers whose interest it will be 
to encourage and promote expenditure; who will be 
certain to unite, and will be able, when united, to 
carry their points. When once a municipality has set 
up an establishment for carrying on any industry it 
will be no use trying to undo the mistake, if such it 
prove to be. Municipal hands cannot be turned adrift. 
Employment must be found for them at the expense 
of the ratepayers, and in due course they will agitate 
for pensions, and, in the end, get them. It will go ill 
at the next election with any one who suggested that 
they be discharged because they are useless, or that 
expenses should be cut down." 1 

"There is much to be said in favor of the system 
of private ownership," declares Mr. James Edward Le 
Rossingol. " It is supported by priority of existence 
and by the conservative instincts of mankind. It is 
also justified in view of the acquisitive instincts of 
human beings. Man is naturally acquisitive. If you 
give him a chance he will work, and work hard, to 
acquire the greatest possible amount of property 
with the least possible expenditure of effort. This 
economy of effort and relative magnitude of result 
is peculiar to individual enterprise carried on for 
the sake of private gain. Public officials exhibit a 
highly developed economy of effort without a corre- 
sponding magnitude of result, because they lack the 
stimulus of the hope of private gain. Therefore, a 
private owner, and to a less degree a private com- 
pany, will practice economy wherever possible. It will 

1 Dangers of Municipal Ownership, by R. P. Porter, p. 112. 



Government Ownership 131 

build its plant at the lowest cost. It will never pay 
excessive salaries. It will dismiss inefficient servants 
without fear or favor. It will have thorough system 
in its management. It will let its contracts on the 
most favorable terms. It will introduce improved 
machinery and methods wherever they are likely to 
secure a saving of any kind. It will, in short, dis- 
play enterprise and diligence and good management 
and thereby the total wealth of the community will 
be increased, without loss or damage to anybody." 1 

"The undertaking by municipalities of commercial 
undertakings is undesirable mainly on five grounds," 
says Lord Avebury, in summing up Ins conclusions on 
a most exhaustive study of this problem: 

"Firstly, the legitimate functions and duties of 
our municipalities are already enough, if not indeed 
more than enough, to tax all their energies and fill up 
all their time. 

"Secondly, it has involved, and will involve, an 
immense increase in municipal debt. 

"Thirdly, it will involve municipalities in labor 
disputes. 

" Fourthly, as there will not be the same stimulus to 
economy and attention, there will be a great prob- 
ability, not to say certainty, that one of two things 
will happen : either there will be a loss, or the service 
will cost more. The working classes will, of course, be 
the greatest sufferers. 

"Fifthly, it is sc serious check to progress and 
discovery." 2 

1 Monopolies, Past and Present, pp. T3T-132. 

2 On Municipal and National Trading, p. 6. 



132 Vital American Problems 

Cannot the corporations owning and operating 
these natural monopolies be so controlled by law 
as to prevent the over-capitalization of the cor- 
porations, the issuing of fraudulent and misleading 
reports as to the business done and profits earned, 
and cannot the corporations be made to pay a fair 
and reasonable price for the ownership and the 
use of franchises ? Will not the evils sought to be 
remedied by the advocates of government owner- 
ship be cured and the dangers attendant on the 
change from private to public ownership be 
eliminated by the adoption of the following plan 
of governmental regulation, supervision, and con- 
trol of corporations owning and operating natural 
monopolies? 



II 

THE SOLUTION 

State Corporation Department. — There 
should be established, under the State government, 
a corporation department with sole power to in- 
corporate associations to engage in elevated and 
surface railroad, canal, river, steamboat, ferry, 
express, navigation, pipe line, transfer, baggage, 
express, telegraph, telephone, palace and sleeping 
car business, for supplying gas, water, electric or 
steam heating, lighting, or power, and all kinds 
of transportation, and to grant licenses to foreign 
corporations, joint-stock companies, or associa- 
tions wishing to carry on any of the foregoing 
lines of business within the State. 

This department should have absolute charge 
and complete control of its natural corporate chil- 
dren and over all the operations of its adopted 
children within its jurisdiction. All corporations 
organized and existing under the laws of the State 
should be made subject to the control of the cor- 
poration department and be amenable to all the 
provisions applying to corporations chartered by 
it, in the same respect as if the corporations had 

133 



J 34 Vital American Problems 

in the first instance been chartered by it. And all 
corporations, joint-stock companies, and associa- 
tions which hereafter may be chartered or or- 
ganized should be prohibited from engaging 
in any of the foregoing lines of business within 
the State until chartered or licensed by this 
department. 

The superintendent or head of this department 
should be appointed by the Governor, to hold office 
during the term for which the Governor was elected, 
thereby placing the responsibility of this office 
on the governor, who holds his position by the 
suffrage of the people. 

Tax on Charters. — Every corporation incorpo- 
rated by this department should pay an organi- 
zation tax of one tenth of one per cent, upon the 
amount of capital stock authorized, and a like 
tax upon any subsequent issue. 

Every foreign corporation, joint-stock company 
or association licensed by this department should 
pay for such license a fee of one tenth of one per 
cent., to be computed upon the basis of the capi- 
tal stock employed by it within the State during 
the first year of carrying on its business in the 
State. 

Property Tax. — The real and personal prop- 
erty owned by corporations should be locally 
assessed and taxed in the civic divisions in which 
the property is located, the same as the real and 
personal property owned by individuals, for the 



Government Ownership 135 

reasons set forth in regard to local taxation of 
property in the plan for Federal incorporation. 

Duties and Powers of Superintendent: — 
The superintendent or head of the Corporation 
Department, through his staff of examiners, annu- 
ally and at such other times as in his judgment 
may seem proper, should examine into the affairs 
of all corporations chartered by or subject to the 
control of his department, in the same manner as 
has been proposed for the commissioner of cor- 
porations to examine into the affairs of corpora- 
tions chartered by the United States. 

All foreign corporations doing business within 
the State should be annually examined by the 
superintendent of this department, to ascertain 
the amount of capital employed within the State 
and as to whether or not the corporation is obey- 
ing the laws. 

The superintendent should also have the power 
to compel corporations chartered or licensed by 
him to furnish, from time to time, such statements 
in regard to the conduct of the corporate business, 
the change of stock interests, the financial condi- 
tion of the company, and such other data as may, 
in his judgment; be necessary to a complete under- 
standing of the business and the condition of the 
corporation. 

A detailed report of the examination of the 
property, business, profits, and losses of every 
domestic corporation should be made each year 



136 Vital American Problems 

and kept on file in the office of the superintendent. 
A summary statement of the corporate assets and 
liabilities, the amount of stock issued and the 
amount paid thereof, in cash and otherwise, the 
actual amount of surplus, and the nature and 
mode in which it is used and invested, should be 
published in a State paper and in one newspaper 
published in the county where the principal place 
of business of such corporation is located. 

Graduated Profit Tax. — For the privilege of 
exercising its corporate franchises and carrying 
on its business in such corporate or organized 
capacity, every corporation organized under or 
subject to the control of this department should 
pay annually the following progressive graded 
tax on the actual net profits earned, based on the 
actual tangible assets of the corporation: 

1 -10 of the 1 st per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-9 of the 2d per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-8 of the 3d per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-7 of the 4th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-6 of the 5th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-5 of the 6th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-4 of the 7th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-3 of the 8th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

1-2 of the 9th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

6-10 of the 10th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

7-10 of the nth per cent. above 6 per cent. 

8-10 of the 12th per cent. above 6 per cent. 

9-10 of each per cent, of profits above 18 per cent. 

Each foreign corporation licensed by this de- 
partment should pay for the privilege of exercising 



Government Ownership 137 

its corporate franchises, and carrying on its cor- 
porate business in the State, a tax of \ of 1 per 
cent, annually upon the fair market value of 
its actual tangible assets employed within the 
State. 

Great care should be taken to so equalize the 
tax upon domestic and foreign corporations that 
the investor will not find it more profitable to 
incorporate in a foreign jurisdiction than in the 
State in which the corporate business is expected 
to be conducted. 

Ten-Year Averaging. — Every ten years the 
Board of Examiners should ascertain the fixed 
average of profits earned by each domestic cor- 
poration for that period. If the average of net 
profits does not exceed 6 per cent, per annum, 
the State should refund to the corporation the 
moneys received during such period as a tax on 
its profits above 6 per cent., or so much thereof 
as to make the average of profits earned untaxed 
equal to 6 per cent., thus allowing to every do- 
mestic corporation untaxed an average of 6 per 
cent, profit on its tangible assets during the period 
of its existence. 

By the adoption of this plan all corporations 
owning natural monopolies would be compelled 
to be organized on a fair and just basis and to 
conduct their affairs on upright, honest business 
principles; further, the corporate stockholders 
would be compelled to pay a reasonable price for 



138 Vital American Problems 

all franchises owned by them. The allowance 
untaxed of 6 per cent, of actual net profits on the 
fair market value of the tangible assets of the 
corporation would be sufficiently large to stimu- 
late business, while the progressive graded tax on 
profits above 6 per cent, would be a reason- 
able charge for the ownership and use of the 
franchise. 

The State of Massachusetts in 1897 enacted a 
statute applying to the Boston Elevated Com- 
pany. This statute, drawn in the form of a con- 
tract, provides that for a term of twenty-five 
years no additional taxes shall be laid upon the 
railway, but that as a compensation for the privi- 
leges granted, and for the use and occupation of 
the streets, the company shall pay a tax of £ of 
1 per cent, on its gross income, provided the 
dividend on its shares does not exceed six per cent., 
but that if the dividend should exceed six per cent, 
then there shall be an additional amount paid in 
taxes upon the excess above six per cent. This 
statute has never been considered unjust to the 
railway company, nor has the amount of the tax 
been deemed excessive. 

Would it not be advisable to adopt a plan along 
the lines of the one herein set forth before running 
the risk attendant on municipal and State govern- 
ments entering on a speculative investment by 
purchasing and operating these natural monop- 
olies? If, after a fair trial, this plan can be shown 



Government Ownership 139 

to be ineffective, then, but not until then, would 
it be wise to take the momentous and dangerous 
step of having the government buy, own, and 
operate natural monopolies. 



LABOR PROBLEM 



141 



THE PROBLEM 

THE American " labor problem" is quite as 
vital a problem as the American " trust 
problem." Its claim on the attention and the 
deepest thought of all right-minded people is be- 
coming more pressing with the continued growth 
and development of our country. 

As a result of present-day economic conditions, 
the industrial world is divided into two opposing 
camps. Their banners are waving in every breeze 
and the press reports their daily movements. 

On the one hand, American capitalists are unit- 
ing, factories are being combined, and the consoli- 
dation of forces is the steady, growing movement 
among the employer class. Corporations with 
millions of capital are of weekly origin. There 
are in active existence in the United States 850 
industrial combinations having a total capitaliza- 
tion of $15,000,000,000, besides thousands of cor- 
porations which practically include all business 
of profit. These giant corporations dominate and 
control the markets of the country. Their organ- 
ization is soulless, while greed is the prime factor 

143 



144 Vital American Problems 

in their management. Their officers are men 
placed in power to produce results. How, is too 
often unquestioned. As a result of this condition, 
the officers and managers, as a rule, will go to any 
length to hold their positions and to obtain an 
increase in their salaries. If the price of the fin- 
ished product can be raised without losing the 
market, this course will be adopted; if the wages 
of labor can be forced down, that will be done. 
"Do everything to increase the dividends/ ' is the 
order given by the stockholders. On October 30, 
1903, "The Citizens Industrial Association of 
America" was organized. This is an association 
of manufacturers organized to oppose what they 
claim are the exactions of the labor unions. This 
association asserts that it has a membership of 
three thousand manufacturers, each contributing 
fifty dollars a year toward creating a fund to be 
used in industrial battles. 

Since 1900, the progress of the movement for 
the organization of employers of labor into strong 
associations, having for their primary purpose the 
treating with, or resistance to, the claims of labor 
unions, has been so rapid that almost every im- 
portant feature of trade-union organization finds 
its counterpart in employers' associations. 

On the other hand, labor unions are being organ- 
ized, federations of unions are being formed, and 
the laborer's dream of the working men of Amer- 
ica being united in one confederate body is rap- 



Labor Problem 145 

idly becoming a fact. A federation that can stop 
for five months the mining of anthracite coal is a 
power greater than the founders of the American 
Commonwealth could picture. In one federation 
there are more than twenty thousand unions, and 
these unions cover every trade. It is estimated 
that the unions in the United States have in the 
neighborhood of 4,000,000 members. Not only 
are trade-unions strong in numbers, but their 
financial strength is large. On January 1, 1903, 
the United Mine Workers had in the treasury 
$1,027,120.29. Its members gave to the relief of 
the anthracite coal strikers, in 1902, $258,343.94, 
and they raised by assessments $1,967,026.34, 
making a total of $2,225,370.28 raised with refer- 
ence to the anthracite coal strike by the United 
Mine Workers of this country. 

The aim of working men in uniting is to ob- 
tain shorter hours of labor, better conditions 
under which to work, and an increase in their 
wages. Their leaders are retained in office only 
so long as they pluck the golden fruit from 
the tree of capital. "Get more for us in short- 
ness of hours and increase of wage " are the 
daily commands of the working men to their 
leaders. 

That employers have a right to unite their cap- 
ital and to consolidate their efforts in the form 
of corporations, the courts have repeatedly held. 
That the employees should have the right to unite 
10 



146 Vital American Problems 

for the protection of their interests, no one can 
seriously question. 

The trade union is as inevitable a product of 
modern economic life as the corporation. The 
one is an association of labor, the other an asso- 
ciation of capital; both are attempts to attain 
individual prosperity through concerted efforts. 

The rule laid down by Judge McPherson of the 
United States Circuit Court in the case of the 
Union Pacific Railway Company vs. Ruef is one 
now recognized by the courts throughout the 
country : 

" The defendants have the right to combine and work 
together in whatsoever way they believe will increase 
their earnings, shorten their hours, lessen their labor, 
or better their condition. . . . All such is part of their 
liberty. The American people, generally, agree in 
endorsing the right of working men to combine.' ' * 

As there are corporations of national scope, it 
is necessary that there should be labor unions of 
national scope; and as there are combinations 
of capitalists who have the power by a simple 
notice to reduce the wages of all workers in a sin- 
gle industry, the wage-earners of the country 
should have the right to combine to offset the 
power of the capitalists. 

The labor union has done more for the uplifting 
of the working man than has any other force or 

1 120 Fed. Rep., p. 102 (1903). 



Labor Problem 147 

condition. It has abolished the sweat-shop, pre- 
vented the employment of young children, hu- 
manely regulated the work of women, bettered 
the material condition of the men workers, short- 
ened their hours of labor, and largely increased 
their earnings. It has taught the working man 
to subordinate his own wishes to the will of the 
majority; it has infused the spirit of brotherhood 
by compelling him to associate on equal terms 
with his fellow-craftsmen of all nations, languages 
and religions, and it has educated the immigrant 
in the principles of American democratic govern- 
ment, and, in a large measure, has prepared him 
for worthy citizenship. No other force tends more 
strongly to secure the needed amalgamation of 
these diverse nationalities and to inspire the newly 
arrived foreigner with common American ideals 
than unionism — a fact demonstrated in the Penn- 
sylvania coal strike and the garment-makers' 
strike in New York city in 1904. 

A trade-union is organized primarily for pur- 
poses of industrial conflict. It is well defined by 
Nicholas Paine Gilman as "a continuous associa- 
tion, made up of working people only, who belong 
to a particular trade or industry, and formed for 
the purpose of bringing the pressure of an organ- 
ization to bear in their interests upon their em- 
ployer or employers." 1 

The constant striving on the part of employers 

* Methods of Industrial Peace ■, p. 16. 



148 Vital American Problems 

to keep down wages and the never-ceasing efforts 
by the labor unions to raise wages, together with 
the general feeling of antagonism that exists be- 
tween these two classes, naturally cause friction 
and frequent misunderstandings, which often cul- 
minate in a serious breach, ending in a strike 
or a lockout. 

Evidence of this strained condition may be 
found wherever the relation of employer and em- 
ployee exists. The United States Department of 
Labor gives the following statistics of labor dis- 
turbances in this country for the twenty years end- 
ing December 1, 1900: 

22,793 strikes, with a wage loss of $257,863,478; 
a loss through assistance rendered by labor organ- 
izations of $16,174,793 ; and a loss to employers of 
$122,731,121. The lockouts during the same 
period numbered 1005, with a wage loss to em- 
ployees of $48,819,745; a loss through assistance 
rendered by labor organizations of $3,451,461 ; and 
a loss to employers of $19,927,983. Thus, the 
total loss to employees from strikes and lockouts 
was $306,683,223; to employers, $142,659,104; 
making the grand total of loss to both parties of 
$449,342,327. 

During this period, according to Dr. Carroll D. 
Wright, former United States Commissioner of 
Labor, 

"the number of establishments involved in these 
strikes . . . was 117,509. . . . There were 6,105,694 



Labor Problem 



149 



employees thrown out of employment. In addition 
to these strikes there occurred . . . lockouts involv- 
ing nearly 10,000 establishments and throwing out of 
employment over 1,000,000 people. . . . The average 
duration of all the strikes was nearly twenty-four 
days, and of the lockouts over ninety-seven days." 

From 1900 to 1906, the Department of Labor 
furnishes the following statistics of strikes and 
lockouts : * 



Year. 


Strikes. 


Strikers. 


Employees thrown 










out of work. 






Number. 


Average 
per strike. 


Number. 


Average 
per strike. 


1900 


*.779 


399»656 


225 


505,066 


284 


1901 


2,924 


396,280 


136 


543.386 


186 


1902 


3,162 


553, x 43 


x 75 


659,792 


209 


1903 


3>494 


53 x > 68 2 


x 52 


656,055 


188 


1904 


2,3°7 


375,754 


163 


5 J 7,2ii 


224 


1905 


2,077 


I 76,337 


85 


221,686 


107 


Year. 


Lockouts. 


Employees locked 


Employees thrown 






< 


DUt. 


out oj 


work. 






Number. 


Average per 
Lockout. 


Number. 


Average per 
Lockout. 


1900 


60 


46,562 


776 


62,653 


1,044 


1901 


88 


16,257 


185 


20,457 


232 


1902 


78 


3°»3°4 


389 


3 I ,7 I 5 


407 


1903 


*54 


112,332 


729 


i3 x »779 


856 


1904 


112 


44,908 


401 


56,604 


505 


*9°5 


109 


68,474 


628 


80,748 


741 



The Report to the President by the Anthracite 
Coal Strike Commission of the losses suffered by 
reason of the Pennsylvania anthracite coal strike, 
which lasted from May 12 to October 23, 1902, 

1 2 1 st Annual Report of Comr. of Labor, 1906, pp. 15, 20. 



150 Vital American Problems 

and in which about 147,000 mine workers aban- 
doned their employment and remained idle until 
the strike was declared off, stated as follows: 

" It is impossible to state with accuracy the losses 
occasioned by the strike, but fair estimates may be 
given. The total shipments of anthracite coal in 1902, 
according to a statement of Mr. Wm. W. Ruley, chief 
of the Bureau of Anthracite Coal Statistics, were 31,- 
200,890 long tons. As compared with 1901, when 
the shipments amounted to 53,568,601 long tons, 
this indicates a decrease of 22,367,711 long tons, or 
over 40 per cent. If the same decrease is assumed 
for the coal mined for local trade and consumption, 
the total decrease in production in 1902 amounted to 
24,604,482 long tons, which at the price received in 
1 90 1 meant a decrease in the receipts of the coal- 
mining companies, for their product at the mines, 
of $46,100,000. Assuming the average wage-cost to 
be about $1.25 per ton on marketable coal, and allow- 
ing for wages paid to engineers, pumpmen, and others 
who remained at work during the strike, the mine 
employees lost in wages a total of about $25,000,000. 

" It may be mentioned that, according to reports 
made at the recent convention of mine workers in 
Indianapolis, there were expended about $1,800,000 
in relief funds. 

11 Assuming that 60 per cent, of the total shipments 
represents the size above pea coal, the decrease in the 
shipments of these larger sizes in 1902, as compared 
with 1901, was 13,420,627 long tons. With an aver- 
age price at New York Harbor of $4.09 per ton, and 
with 35 per cent, of the receipts charged to transporta- 



Labor Problem 151 

tion expenses, the decrease in freights paid to the 
railroad companies on these larger sizes, if it had all 
been sent to New York Harbor, would have been 
about $19,000,000; and assuming the freight rate of 
$1.00 per ton on the smaller sizes, the total decrease 
in freight receipts of the transportation companies 
would have been about $28,000,000." 

One of the results of the Colorado miners ' strike 
in 1 903-1 904 was the ordering out of the militia 
of the State to assist in preserving law and order 
in localities where labor disturbances existed, at 
a total expense to the State of $776,464. 

Mr. Slason Thompson has compiled the follow- 
ing statistics based on published accounts. "Ex- 
perienced and trustworthy newspaper men," says 
Mr. Thompson, "were employed in sixteen widely 
separated news centres of the country to examine 
the files of the leading newspapers of their re- 
spective sections. When they returned * several' 
wounded or arrested, it had been entered for only 
two; and when the reports read 'many' their 
entry had been made three." 

KILLED, INJURED, AND ARRESTED IN STRIKES IN THE 
UNITED STATES BETWEEN JANUARY i, 1902, 

AND JUNE 30, 1904. 
State. Killed. Injured. Arrested. 

California 6 34 31 

Colorado 42 112 1345 

Connecticut 4 45 6 5 

Idaho — 12 — 

Illinois 35 477 I 353 

Indiana — 14 39 

Carried forward 87 694 2833 



152 Vital American Problems 

State. Killed. Injured. Arrested. 

Brought forward 87 694 2833 

Iowa 3 5 22 

Kentucky 3 — 5 

Louisiana 1 38 79 

Maryland — 9 10 

Massachusetts — 3 * 9 

Michigan 3 4 7 

Minnesota — 9 * 

Mississippi — — * 

Missouri 8 40 69 

Nebraska 2 5 9 

Nevada 3 4 J 

New Jersey 3 7 6 l2 5 

New York 4 ^3 x ,°°° 

Ohio 3 2 ° 2 3 

Oregon — 4 J 8 

Pennsylvania 35 486 678 

Tennessee 4 7 88 

Texas 1 *5 62 

Utah — 41 223 

Virginia 1 2 4 25 

Washington — 6 11 

West Virginia 13 x 9 J 92 

Wisconsin * J IO 

Arizona 5 l8 I2 

180 1,651 5,533 

From the reports in the Chicago newspapers Mr. 
Thompson has gathered the following statistics : 

KILLED, INJURED, AND ARRESTED IN STRIKES IN THE 

UNITED STATES DURING THREE MONTHS, JULY 1 

TO SEPTEMBER 30, 1904. 

Killed. Injured. Arrested. 

Non-union men 9 260 41 

Union strikers 5 22 540 

Officers 4 33 — 

Total 18 315 581 



Labor Problem 153 

Making a total for the two years and nine 
months of: 

Killed. Injured. Arrested. 

Non-union Men 125 1,626 415 

Union strikers 56 1 73 5,699 

Officers 17 167 — 

Total 198 1,966 6,114 

From May 1 to November 3, 1902, in Pennsyl- 
vania alone, according to Mr. Thompson, there 
were: 

Thirty occupied dwellings dynamited. 

Forty trains obstructed or wrecked. 

Four dams and bridges dynamited. 

Scores of houses burned, stoned, shot into, or 
otherwise attacked. 

Unnumbered riots and assaults with clubs, stones, 
and other weapons. 

Cattle poisoned, doctors forbidden to attend the 
sick, ministers boycotted for ministering to the dying. 

In reference to the Chicago stock-yard strike 
in the fall of 1904, which was proclaimed a 
"peaceable strike, " involving 26,000 workers, Mr. 
Thompson says : 

"There have been five deaths, 213 serious as- 
saults, innumerable riots and arrests, and untold 
suffering and misery due to this one strike alone.' ' ! 

To-day, no signs of a decrease in the number of 
strikes and lockouts are discernible. On the con- 
trary, every indication points to a constant in- 

1 "Violence in Labor Conflicts, " Outlook, Nov., 1904. 



154 Vital American Problems 

crease in their number and the extent of their 
influence, due, very largely, to the lining up of the 
forces of capital in the form of giant corporations 
and of the unions in federations. 

But the financial loss to working men is the 
least of the losses suffered by them. A strike or a 
lockout often foments fierce passions which lead 
to the commission of crimes and the destruction 
of property. During the enforced idleness, the 
working man's mind, while brooding over his sit- 
uation, becomes clouded with discontent, giving 
him a distorted view of life, and often making him 
a follower of vagaries inconsistent with American 
democratic institutions. 

The present labor conditions in the United 
States have brought into existence labor leaders 
of the type of the late Sam Parks. Through the 
influence of this man, the building operations in 
New York city during the season of 1903 were 
practically suspended. The losses incident 
thereto have been estimated to be not less than 
$60,000,000. 

The action of the Brooklyn Shipbuilding Com- 
pany has strikingly shown the effects of the pres- 
ent method of settling disputes between capital 
and labor. The New York Sun, in commenting 
on this case, said: 

" The labor agitators have achieved one of the most 
complete victories in the history of trade-unionism. 
Two years ago (1901) 2200 men were carried on the 



Labor Problem 155 

company's payrolls, to whom $1,196,000 was paid in 
wages every year. They have taught the company 
who is boss. No one is on the payroll now, and the 
works are closed. It is a great victory. 'The goose 
that laid the golden egg is killed/ " 

In many cases, men quit work ostensibly for the 
reason that they consider their wages insufficient, 
or their hours of labor too long, when in reality it 
is because their leader or walking delegate has not 
received the sum of money he demanded as the 
price for the men remaining at work. The men 
remain idle until the employer weakens and the 
bribe is paid, when the men return to work. The 
members of the average union seldom question 
the pretext given by their leader upon which they 
have been ordered to stop working. When the 
unfortunate employer tells the men that the true 
object of the ordering of the strike was to black- 
mail him, they will not believe this statement, 
as in most cases their faith in their walking dele- 
gate is unshakable. 

The power for inflicting evil with which nearly 
every labor leader is clothed may be exercised 
in many ways. An employer, desiring to injure 
a rival employer, or to take away from him an 
advantage which he enjoys, or otherwise to defeat 
him in the successful prosecution of his business, 
can do so by buying an unscrupulous walking 
delegate. A strike will be ordered and the men 
will go out. The walking delegate will receive 



156 Vital American Problems 

his pay, and the men will go without their wages ; 
or, in times of great business activity, the men will 
be sent to work elsewhere until their former em- 
ployer in turn pays the walking delegate the bribe 
demanded, to have them sent back to his shop or 
factory. 

In seasons of intense competition in the building 
trade in large cities, the contractor who is known 
to always complete his contracts on time is in 
great demand. It counts to be known as one who 
has no trouble with his workmen. It is an inju- 
rious thing to have strikes. In the letting of con- 
tracts these considerations are most weighty. The 
intense activity of the twentieth century puts a 
premium on the doing of work rapidly. The un- 
scrupulous walking delegate will not only keep 
the liberal contractor free from strikes, but will 
see to it that a rival contractor has strikes and 
interminable delays on all his work. And when 
skilled labor is scarce and there is not enough to 
go around, the liberal contractor has a strike called 
on enough of his rival's work to secure for him the 
hands he needs. 

Out of all this, organized labor gets nothing but 
disrepute and loss of wages. The union has to 
bear the odium; and the men, forced into periods 
of idleness, suffer loss they can ill afford to bear. 
It is a significant fact that nearly all the building 
operations carried on in the city of New York 
during the summer of 1903 were under contract 



Labor Problem 157 

by a single concern — the company that cashed the 
checks for Sam Parks, the notorious leader of the 
working men's unions of the building trades of 
that city. 

But it is not alone because of the unscrupulous, 
the dishonest leaders that the union members are 
made to suffer, but it is also to the honest, short- 
sighted leaders whose minds fail to grasp the im- 
port and effect of economic conditions that bring 
discords and strikes into existence. 

Fortunately, there are other styles of leaders. 
It is men of the character and ability of John 
Mitchell and Frank S. Sargeant who have made 
possible the bettering of the condition of the 
American working man. The present condition 
of labor is a monument to the unselfish, upright, 
energetic character of the leaders of the unions in 
the days that have gone, and to the present leaders 
of the same class. 

If all the leaders were of the type of Mr. Herman 
Robinson, and would give to the members of their 
union the advice he gave to the motormen and 
conductors of the New York and Queens County 
Railroad, at a meeting called for the purpose 
of considering the advisability of a strike, no 
necessity would exist for the penning of these 
lines. 

To the statement of one of the members of the 
union, " The union must control the road," Rob- 
inson replied: 



158 Vital American Problems 

" My friend, the union can never control the road. 
The company controls the road. All that the mem- 
bers of the union have any right to do, so far as the 
road is concerned, is to agree on the terms on which 
they will work for the company or quit if they don't 
get them. ,, 

The two types of leaders may be illustrated 
by the statement made by C. P. Shea, president 
of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 
in 1907, "I do not consider anything a violation 
of an agreement that is done to uphold the princi- 
ples of trades-unionism," and the words of Grand 
Master Morrissey of the Brotherhood of Railway 
Trainmen, spoken before the national convention 
of his union in 1903, "We shall see the time 
when we will regard the contract-breaker . . . 
with as much contempt as we now regard the 
scab." 

There was a Judas among the picked twelve 
chosen by Jesus Christ. There have been Ju- 
dases in every body of men since the world began. 
There necessarily will be Judases among the 
many labor leaders in America. It is those who 
must be considered, — not the Johns nor the 
Jameses. 

The power possessed and exercised by honest, 
upright labor leaders redounds to the benefit 
of the members; but the power which may be 
abused by unworthy men should be so hedged 
about that evil can not result therefrom. Be- 



Labor Problem 159 

fore leaving New York for the penitentiary, Sam 
Parks made this significant statement : 

" Every laboring man in this country should remem- 
ber me for years to come. I should be a warning to 
them. I 'm the victim of a custom that is older than 
I am, and that is the habit of having money transac- 
tions with employers. They put me here. I could 
name one hundred employers who have made a prac- 
tice of using labor unions against competitors. I 
know plenty of employers who have made fortunes 
by the use of money on a young fellow who has never 
made more than a couple of dollars a day, and has 
been put in authority by his union." 

Whatever the merits of a strike or a lockout 
may be, the contending parties have no right, 
moral or legal, to inflict injury on an innocent 
party. And as the public is injured and suffers 
a direct loss as a result of every strike or lockout 
of any magnitude, the public has the right to de- 
mand and to receive protection. There are three 
parties to every labor controversy — the employer, 
the employed, and the public. 

In a large number of strikes and lockouts, the 
public probably experiences little or no inconven- 
ience, and, therefore, is not financially interested 
in them; but in many instances the loss suffered 
is so great that it cannot be computed. 

The time has come when the government should 
provide every needed safeguard for the interests 



160 Vital American Problems 

of employers and employees, and should no longer 
allow them to rend society by their quarrels. 

In 1897, the entire engineering trades in Eng- 
land became involved in a general strike, which 
was fought to its finish in January, 1898. The 
result of the strike was that England lost trade 
which she is likely never to regain. On the other 
hand, the prosperity enjoyed by America during 
the past ten years, in the machine and tool trades 
and in the steel, iron, and metal-making indus- 
tries, is due very largely to the impulse given 
when English factories were idle. 

In the United States the people will not soon 
forget their experience in 1902. The long-pro- 
tracted anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania 
caused factories to close, thereby throwing inno- 
cent men out of employment, stopping the income 
of the factory-owners, curtailing business enter- 
prises throughout the American Union, and bring- 
ing to thousands suffering from cold and hunger. 

The Indiana Labor Commission, in discussing 
the rights of the public during labor disturbances, 
says: 

" A strike in a factory would not jeopardize the pub- 
lic's interest to the same extent that one would on a 
street-car line of a populous city or on a railway 
system. 

" Strikes and lockouts involving or largely affecting 
freight and passenger traffic cause inconveniences 
and losses of the gravest consequence, and that fre- 



Labor Problem 161 

quently culminate in a necessity for repression by 
force. . . . Frequently the injuries sustained by the 
public are more grievous than those of either con- 
testant, or both combined, for that matter. Several 
times this situation has existed in Indiana, and disas- 
trous consequences have followed. . . . Those with 
experience and observation know that often labor 
troubles progress with an ever-increasing intensity; 
both sides become deaf to reason, refuse to yield, 
compromise, or arbitrate. . . . Meantime, the help- 
less public must drift defencelessly along, suffering 
from evils for which it is in no wise responsible, and 
from which there is no relief until the combatants are 
either coerced by force or have expended their ill- 
directed strength, and by their exhaustion are forced 
to quit the fight. Thus upon innocent persons are 
entailed pecuniary losses." 1 

The consolidation of industries has already gone 
so far that a strike in any one of many of the giant 
corporations may cut off nearly the whole supply of 
one article, and it may be an article that the public 
cannot be deprived of without entailing suffering 
or loss. If it is a necessity for the poor, the injury 
which the stoppage would cause would be most 
grave, but even though it be not an absolutely 
necessary article, and even though the consumers 
of it be not the very poor, the sudden closing of 
the source of supply would bring injury to a vast 
number of people who would have no part in the 

i Report for 1 899-1 900, p. 11. 



162 Vital American Problems 

pending dispute, but do have an undoubted right 
to protection. 

A strike or a lockout is one of the very few cus- 
toms handed down to this generation from early 
days. It was the ancient barbaric way of settling 
private controversies. In olden times, all matters 
of difference were tried by a personal contest be- 
tween the parties in dispute. The stronger man 
won. Might made right. But as the world grew 
older, and the principles that underly an enlight- 
ened civilization developed, men saw that such 
contest did not determine the merits of the contro- 
versy, but only the strength of the contestants; 
so courts were established to act as arbitrators, 
in order that the controversies might be decided 
on their merits. 

" Viewed from ideal conditions,' ' writes John Mitch- 
ell, " a strike is a barbarous method of settling indus- 
trial controversies. It is a struggle of endurance, a 
question of might, not right. It is a war carried into 
the industrial field, and, like all war, attended by 
cruelty and suffering; it is a feudal conflict, in which 
many besides the immediate contestants are griev- 
ously injured. Thus, from an ideal point of view, the 
necessity for even occasional strikes constitutes one of 
the strongest indictments against civilized society. " 

Daniel J. Keefe, president of the Longshore- 
men's Association, has recently said: 

" Labor strikes are but another species of war. As 
modern war, owing to the invention of modern appli- 



Labor Problem 163 

ances for the destruction of life and property, becomes 
more terrible, so also does the strike of to-day become 
more serious, owing to the general strength and intelli- 
gence of the forces of labor, and the loss to the victor 
and vanquished correspondingly heavy. Let us try to 
consider the meaning of a strike in the United States, 
where the entire force of organized labor was arrayed 
against capital. The mere contemplation of such a 
crisis makes my blood run cold. Imagine for a mo- 
ment what this would mean. It would mean no- 
thing if not war." 

So long as the law provides no court for the 
effective settlement of labor controversies, the only 
weapon labor has for the defence of its interests 
is the refusal to work, except upon agreed terms. 
As conditions now exist, once the laborer refuses to 
work on the employer's terms, he immediately sees 
another man taking his place, thus rendering his 
one and only weapon powerless. What wonder, 
therefore, that the working man, facing perma- 
nent loss of employment, and hunger threatening 
his helpless family, so often resorts to violence 
and brings into existence conditions so deplorable ? 
How much more just it would be for the public 
generally to substitute, in place of condemnation, 
a legal tribunal in which the working men may ob- 
tain redress for their grievances and where the 
questions in dispute between the employer and 
his employees may be settled on the basis of right 
and equity. 



1 64 Vital American Problems 

Mr. Nicholas Paine Gilman sums up the situa- 
tion very clearly from the stand-point of the pub- 
lic in these words : 

" The public is the supreme court of appeal, and it 
does not approve of trade-unions making war on em- 
ployers' associations; or of employers' associations 
fighting trade-unions to the bitter end; or of trade- 
unions and employers' associations banded together 
to fleece the public. 1 

1 Methods of Industrial Peace, p. 15. 



II 

THE SOLUTION 
PLAN I 

THE final solution of the " labor problem " in 
all its phases will ultimately be found in the 
substitution of the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them," for the David Harum golden rule, "Do 
unto the other fellow the way he 'd like to do unto 
you, an* do it fust," which to-day is the guiding 
policy of both employer and employee. 

But the millenium is not yet in sight; it is still 
a long way off. And until this happy period is 
ushered in, it is imperative that some means be 
found, in addition to the spreading of Christian 
doctrines, to prevent the shutting down of facto- 
ries, the closing of mines, and the stoppage of in- 
dustry by strikes and lockouts. 

Many thoughtful minds have come to consider 
the adoption of co-operative trade agreements as 
the most sane, reasonable, and equitable solution 
of this problem. 

Mr. John R. Commons has well stated the 

165 



1 66 Vital American Problems 

direction toward which the discussion of the 
labor problem is tending, in the following words: 
"Though organized for contest and marked by a 
history of struggle, the goal of unionism is the 
trade agreement/ ' 

By trade or industrial agreement is meant the 
contract entered into by an employer and his 
employee or employees, which provides all the 
details as to the term of service, wages, hours of 
labor, and conditions under which the work is to 
be done, and a further provision in case of a dis- 
pute as to the terms of the contract, for the sub- 
mission of such difference to arbitrators whose 
decision shall be binding on all the parties thereto. 

The adoption of the industrial agreement will 
in a large measure do away with all friction which 
might lead to a strike or lockout, foster stable and 
kindly relations between the employer and em- 
ployee, and will solidify interests and steady the 
industrial community. 

It accomplishes these ends by reason of the 
fact that, since the agreement is to remain unal- 
tered for a definite period of time, sudden and fre- 
quent disputes are not apt to arise. Ordinarily, 
either party, if discontented with the working of 
the agreement, quietly bides the time until a new 
agreement can be made. Further, the employer 
is deprived of the position he so often takes of 
reducing wages on the bald assertion that he is not 
getting at present a fair return for capital and 



Labor Problem 167 

ability. In collective bargaining, he must pro- 
duce facts and figures to sustain his contention. 
The union, likewise, when making a demand for an 
increase of wages, must be prepared to substan- 
tiate its position by solid arguments based not 
only on the general condition of the business and 
the profits realized, but also on the cost of living. 
"Bluffing," which now plays such an important 
part in every labor controversy, will be practically 
eliminated from the discussion of the terms of an 
industrial agreement. Of course, a compromise 
will probably be the result of any discussion, 
neither party gaining its full demand, but such is 
the result in all other cases of bargaining. 

"In the great majority of strikes, ,, declares Nicholas 
Paine Gilman, "the question is commonly a matter of 
minor terms and conditions ; it is not a matter of the 
life or death of the business. There is a fair chance 
of adjustment if both parties become more reasonable, 
and the parties are wise to continue the status quo 
until all possibility of a settlement has disappeared. "* 

Mr. John Mitchell has recently said : 

" The idea of the joint trade agreement is the essence 
of trade-unionism. We have now 350,000 men work- 
ing under conditions which are fixed by joint agree- 
ment. . . . The trade agreement makes for peace 
in the industrial world.' ' 

1 Methods of Industrial Peace, p. 251. 



168 Vital American Problems 

But the evolutionary development of such an 
idea is of slow growth. It takes time to teach 
men the necessity of pulling up the peg which 
marks their attainment in any direction, and of 
going forward a few steps before driving it in 
again. In the meantime, vigorous lessons must 
be brought home to all minds in order that views 
may be changed, prejudices obliterated, and con- 
servatism be made to give way to new forces. 

As the bulk of the manufacturing, milling, and 
mining business in the United States is done by 
corporations, and as corporations receive their 
charters from the individual State governments, 
the State Legislatures must be appealed to, to 
frame laws that will protect the public from loss 
arising out of industrial disturbances, until such 
time when trade agreements shall be entered into 
and lived up to by all corporations and their 
employees. 

The State, which gives to a group of citizens a 
charter of incorporation, has the power to provide 
rules and regulations for the use of that privilege. 
This power, limited only by constitutional pro- 
visions, has never been denied. 

Let the State require all corporations chartered 
in the State, or employing men and women to do 
business in the State, to employ only by means 
of a written contract. Further, let the State 
declare that no contract between the corporation 
employer and its employees shall be binding 



Labor Problem 169 

unless in writing signed by the parties thereto. 

If a corporation should employ any person 
except by means of a written contract the corpo- 
ration should be liable to have its charter an- 
nulled by action brought for that purpose by the 
Attorney-General on behalf of the State. 

Let the State provide that the written contract 
of employment entered into by the corporation 
employer with each of its employees shall clearly 
state the term of service, the kind of service to be 
rendered, and the wages to be paid. 

In case of the breach of such contract without 
good and sufficient legal cause — by the employer 
discharging its employee, or by the employee 
leaving before the expiration of the term stipu- 
lated in such contract, — the Supreme, County, or 
City Courts, upon suit brought by the aggrieved 
party against the other, which suit should be 
returnable in five days after the service of the 
summons, should award judgment directing the 
carrying out of the terms of the contract, and in 
case of default in so doing, assess the damage 
resulting from the breach thereof, which should be 
stipulated in the contract to be the amount to 
become due under the terms of the contract, and 
direct the payment of the same as follows : 

(A) If the judgment is against the corporation 
and a property execution issued thereon has been 
returned wholly or partly unsatisfied, an execution 
may be issued against and levied upon the prop- 



170 Vital American Problems 

erty of any one or all of the officers and directors 
of the corporation, who shall be personally liable 
for the payment of such judgment. 

(B) If the judgment is against the employee, 
and such employee is unmarried, or is married 
and his wife and family are not dependent upon 
him for support, an execution may attach to all 
his property, with the exception of his clothing, 
and to all sums earned by him as wages or salary 
in excess of six dollars per week ; if he is married 
and has a family dependent upon him for support, 
an execution may attach to all his property except 
what is specifically exempted by law, and to all 
sums earned by him as wages or salary in excess of 
nine dollars per week. Upon an execution being 
presented to the employer of such judgment 
debtor he shall retain out of the wages or salary 
to be paid to such employee the excess of the 
amounts exempted herein from execution, and 
shall pay such excess to the officer serving such 
execution. 

The adoption of this plan would probably pro- 
duce the following results : 

(1) It would in no wise injuriously affect the 
working man who lives up to the terms of the 
contract which he has executed, but would provide 
a severe penalty for the breach thereof. 

(2) It would in no wise interfere with the 
existence of the labor union, and would not in 
any way change the present labor conditions as 



Labor Problem 171 

to terms of hiring, the wages to be paid, and the 
matter of "open" or ''closed" shop. 

(3) It would get the employer and employee 
into the habit of entering into a written contract 
of employment instead of an oral one, which is 
the custom to-day. This would make the em- 
ployer and employee think more seriously of the 
duties and liabilities o f the employment. 

(4) It would forestall and prevent misunder- 
standings as to the terms of employment, which 
to-day so often lead to unfortunate complications. 

(5) The penalty for the violation of the con- 
tract would deter both employer and employee 
from arbitrary action and would bring the par- 
ties together in case of dispute, thereby lessening 
the chance of a strike or a lockout. 

(6) The most important result issuing there- 
from would be that, by the coming together of 
the employer and employee for the discussion of 
terms and conditions of employment and for the 
preparation and execution of a written contract, 
trade agreements would finally be adopted in all 
cases of hiring. 



PLAN II 

IN the event of the foregoing plan proving in- 
sufficient to reach the evils fronting the em- 
ployer, the employee, and the general public, as a 
result of labor disputes, the following more 
drastic plan is suggested as a means of bringing to 
these three classes justice, peace, and prosperity. 

The principle of arbitration is advocated very 
strongly by many economists as a means of pre- 
venting strikes and lockouts. Voluntary arbi- 
tration has proved to be of little protection to the 
public, as it is not generally and wholly believed in 
by employers and working men. In many cases 
of actual industrial conflict, when the weaker 
party to the controversy has been willing to sub- 
mit the matter in dispute to arbitration, the 
stronger party has almost invariably taken the 
position that V there is nothing to arbitrate/' 

"Compulsory arbitration" is strongly, vehe- 
mently and passionately opposed by both employer 
and employee. The term " compulsory arbitra- 
tion,' ' in the literal sense of the words, is a verbal 
absurdity, but it refers to a definite idea which 
is well understood. It means that when men will 
not agree on a contract relating to wages or other 

172 



Labor Problem 173 

conditions of employment, and will not consent to 
some third party making a contract for them, 
they should be compelled by some higher power 
to arbitrate their differences. 

The labor union declares that "compulsory arbi- 
tration' ' means the reducing of free working men 
to slaves — by the men being compelled to work 
for the hours and the wages determined by the 
arbitrators, thus depriving them of the liberty 
of contract; while the employer asserts that 
"compulsory arbitration" might mean to him 
the closing out of his business and the ruin of 
his fortune, by the arbitrators deciding that he 
must pay wages greater in amount than his 
business would warrant. Both positions are based 
on sound reasons. "Compulsory arbitration' ' 
might mean all that the employers and the unions 
claim. Such being the case, the public has no 
right to require such a method of settlement of 
labor disputes, except, possibly, as a last resort. 
Then how can the public be protected? By 
adopting a plan of arbitration lying just half 
way between these extremes. 

The terms "strike" and "lockout" may be de- 
fined in the following words : 

" A strike is a concerted withdrawal from work by a 
part or all of the employees of an establishment, or 
several establishments, to enforce a demand on the 
part of employees. 

" A lockout is a refusal on the part of an employer 



174 Vital American Problems 

or several employers to permit a part or all of the em- 
ployees to continue at work, such refusal being made 
to enforce a demand on the part of the employers. ,, * 

As strikes and lockouts are generally local, 
that is, located within the boundaries of a single 
State, and as labor conditions vary among the 
several States, requiring different methods of 
treatment, a State law would be more just and 
satisfactory to all parties than would a Federal 
act. If Congress should enact a law compelling 
all who wish to engage in interstate or foreign 
commerce to incorporate under Federal charter, 
the following plan, with slight modifications, 
might form the basis of a national law. 

Let the State enact a law embodying the 
following features: 

A board of mediation, composed of three mem- 
bers, should be appointed by the Governor. One 
member should be an employer, or selected from 
some association representing employers of labor, 
and one member should be chosen from some 
labor organization and not an employer of labor; 
and the third member should be appointed on the 
recommendation of the other two, if such recom- 
mendation be made within thirty days after 
notice from the Governor ; and if the two appointed 
shall not agree on the third member within the 
time specified, the Governor should make the 

1 2 ist Annual Report of the Comr. of Labor, 1907, p. 11. 



Labor Problem 175 

selection. One member of this board should be 
appointed to serve for a term of three years, one 
for a term of two years, and one for a term of one 
year. At the expiration of the term for which 
each member is selected, his successor should 
be appointed to serve for a term of three 
years. 

Whenever a collective controversy or differ- 
ence concerning wages, hours of labor, or con- 
ditions of employment, not involving questions 
which may be the subject of a suit at law or a bill 
in equity, exists between the employees and 
their employer, being an individual, partnership, 
joint-stock company, corporation or other com- 
bination, who at the time employs not less than 
twenty-five persons in the same general line of 
business, the Board of Mediation should visit the 
locality of the dispute, obtain personal interviews 
with the parties thereto, offer suggestions which 
might lead to a conference, and advise the respec- 
tive parties what, if anything, each ought to do, 
or submit to have done, in order to adjust their 
differences. 

The employer who fears a strike or is threatened 
with blackmail, and the employee who dreads a 
lockout, will be apt to inform the Board of a 
threatened difficulty; and, with the assistance of 
a newspaper clipping bureau, the Board will be 
supplied with adequate information as to the 
existence of labor controversies. 



176 Vital American Problems 

The Board of Mediation should represent the 
public in all labor disputes. Its aim should be to 
bring the contending parties together and to 
try, by mediation, to effect a settlement of the 
differences. While the questions of the amount 
and time of payment of wages, hours of labor, 
working arrangements, and the recognition of 
trade unions, have caused many industrial disturb- 
ances, one of the chief causes of labor troubles, and 
one that serves to widen the breach between the 
employer and the employees, is their ignorance of 
each other and their lack of appreciation of the 
importance of studying each other's interests, 
to the end that each may contribute to their 
common welfare and the success of the industry 
with which they are identified. If the employer 
and his employees, or a committee representing 
the true interests of his employees, were to sit 
around the same table and listen to each other's 
arguments — endeavoring to get each other's 
viewpoint and to understand each other's reasons, 
learning to give as well as to take, holding vital 
opinions steadfastly but expressing them moder- 
ately, keeping the mind open to conviction, de- 
siring to come to a sound and fair conclusion — 
the effect would be that of promoting mutual good 
feeling, confidence, and sympathy; it would re- 
move misunderstandings, take away the power 
of unscrupulous labor leaders; and, coming to 
know each other better, suspicions would fade 



Labor Problem 177 

away, and the employer and employee would 
learn to respect and trust each other. 

The good effects of non-participants in labor 
controversies acting as peace-makers are well 
illustrated in the teamsters' strike in Boston in 
1906, which had passed entirely beyond the 
control of the teamsters' own representatives, and 
which was finally settled by the efforts of a cigar- 
maker and a horseshoer. The longshoremen's 
strike, later in the same year, was settled by 
a freight-handler, a horseshoer, and a furniture 
mover. 

Dr. Carroll D. Wright, in his lecture "How 
Battles of Labor are Treated," says: 

"The work of the Anthracite Board of Conciliation 
is significant not only in itself, but in its results. 
From its organization, in June, 1903, up to August, 
1905, one hundred and forty-one cases were submitted 
to it for arbitration. Ten were complaints by the 
mine owners and one hundred and thirty-one by the 
mine workers. Of the total number of complaints 
submitted, forty-six were withdrawn and twenty- 
eight were not sustained, making seventy-four com- 
plaints which had not sufficient basis to warrant their 
presentation to the Board. Of the remainder nineteen 
complaints were sustained, three were partly sus- 
tained, eleven mutually settled, three compromised, 
and thirty-one were left pending. Seventeen cases 
were sent to an umpire, the board being evenly di- 
vided on them. Most of these cases were decided 
against the miners, but the decision in all cases, 



178 Vital American Problems 

whether against the miners or against the operators, 
was accepted as final, and no break in the work of 
the miners occurred. There was hardly one case dis- 
posed of, by the Board or by the umpire, which under 
other conditions would not have precipitated a strike." 

Fundamentally, there is no hostility between 
capital and labor. Neither can do without the 
other; the interest of the one is the interest of the 
other, and on the prosperity of the one depends 
the prosperity of the other. Each is deeply inter- 
ested in the establishment of a living wage; the 
employer, that his business may not be endan- 
gered by strikes, and the employee, that he may 
secure a high standard of living. As long as 
working men earn less than they believe to be 
necessary for decent existence, they are likely to 
inaugurate a strike. On the other hand, were 
living wages paid, and were the union represented 
by a leader, intelligent and honest, whose sole 
mission was to take proper care of his men, there 
would be little danger of a strike. 

No truer statement has been made than the 
following from the pen of the former Chief- 
Justice of Vermont, Hon. Jonathan Ross: 

44 Capital and labor are interdependent. Neither 
can be prosperous and in a healthy condition without 
the other is equally so. Neither can be in good de- 
mand unless the other is also. They should be friends 
and work harmoniously together. Otherwise both 
are injured, the public incommoded, and the prosper- 



Labor Problem 179 

ity and commerce of the nation imperilled. Hostility 
and warfare between these classes is destructive of the 
true interests of both and of the highest welfare of 
the public — as destructive and as much out of place 
as they would be between husband and wife, if they 
would maintain a happy, prosperous home and 
household. " 1 

These facts are not generally appreciated, and 
will not be until the employer and his employees 
become accustomed to meet in a friendly spirit 
to discuss their joint affairs. While passion or 
false pride stands in the way of an easy meeting 
between the employer and his employees, a dis- 
interested third party, offering neutral ground 
for interviews, may frequently succeed in bringing 
about such a conference. Mediation or concilia- 
tion, of course, will not always serve to avert a 
rupture, but in many cases, unless clear questions 
of principle are involved, an honorable settlement 
of differences can be brought about through this 
agency. 

As the name implies, the office of the Board of 
Mediation should be solely that of offering sug- 
gestions. If the parties in difference cannot come 
to an agreement, the Board should suggest the 
advisability of appointing arbitrators to adjust 
the matters in dispute. If each party to a con- 
troversy believes that his position is fair, neither 

1 " Labor's Warfare and Capital's," American Industries, 
April 1, 1904. 



180 Vital American Problems 

ought to object to the matter in difference being 
presented to a disinterested party or parties to 
determine the merits of the case and to make the 
award. 

If the parties should fail to come to an agree- 
ment and should refuse, after a reasonable time, 
to submit their differences to arbitration ; or if a 
strike or a lockout should occur and the parties to 
the collective dispute should fail, after a three- 
days notice, to notify the Board in writing of 
their willingness to submit the difference to arbi- 
tration, each side naming one arbitrator and 
agreeing to allow the two arbitrators selected 
to name the third arbitrator; or if after investi- 
gation the Board should be convinced that an 
attempt at extortion or blackmail had been made 
by a labor leader, accompanied by a threat to call 
off from a job the members of a union, or a de- 
mand for a bribe to keep the men working, the 
Board should bring the matter to the attention 
of the Industrial Court. 

An Industrial Court should be organized under 
the judicial system of the State. It should be a 
movable court, holding its sessions in the court- 
house located nearest to the place where the con- 
troversy arose. It should be presided over by 
three judges to be elected by the people. Upon 
the adoption of this plan, one judge should be 
elected to serve for a term of six years, one for a 
term of four years, and one for a term of two 



Labor Problem 181 

years. At the expiration of the term for which 
each judge is elected, his successor should be 
elected to serve for a term of six years. 

Cases should be brought before the Court by the 
Board of Mediation or by either of the parties in 
dispute, by filing a certificate with the Court, 
stating fully the subject of the controversy. A 
copy of this certificate should be served upon 
the employer — if a corporation, upon an officer, 
if a firm, upon one of its members; and upon the 
employees — if members of a union, upon the 
president or secretary, and if not members of a 
union, upon not less than ten of their number. 
Reasonable time should be given to the employer, 
the employees, and the Board of Mediation, for 
the filing of a separate statement of the facts in 
dispute. 

If, without good cause shown, any party to the 
proceedings before the Court should fail to attend 
or to be represented, the Court should have the 
right to proceed as if he had duly attended or had 
been represented. 

The Court should sit in the full light of publicity, 
except when the judges deem it for the best 
interests of the litigants to hold secret sessions. 
The employer, the employee, and the Board of 
Mediation should be permitted to appear by 
attorney, to subpoena witnesses, and to compel 
the production of all books and papers necessary 
for the trial of the controversy. 



182 Vital American Problems 

In the matter of the production of the books of 
the employer, the Court should use the utmost 
discretion. The inspection of books should not be 
allowed unless the Court is satisfied that such 
inspection is absolutely essential in the interests 
of justice, and then, only in cases of the most 
extreme necessity should such power be exercised. 

No person should be excused from testify- 
ing or from producing before the Court books, 
papers, tariffs, contracts, or agreements on the 
ground or for the reason that such testimony 
or evidence, documentary or otherwise, required 
of him, may tend to criminate him or subject 
him to a penalty or forfeiture. But no person 
should be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty 
or forfeiture for or on account of any transaction, 
matter, or thing concerning which he might testify 
or produce evidence before said Court in any case 
or proceeding, except for perjury committed in 
so testifying. 

The Court should not be bound by the hard- 
and-fast rules of evidence that prevail in the civil 
courts; great latitude of procedure should be 
allowed, so as to enable the Court to arrive at a 
just conclusion. 

Whenever an industrial dispute should involve 
technical questions, the Court should have the 
power to direct the appointment of two experts, 
one to be chosen by each party to the dispute, 
to act as advisers. 






Labor Problem 183 

The Court should have the right to enter and 
inspect any institution, establishment, factory, 
workshop, or mine that will be affected by the 
decision of the Court. 

The Industrial Court should have power to 
hear, try, and determine all controversies of every 
name, nature, and description not cognizable by 
the State Courts, arising between the employees 
and their employer, if at the time he employs 
not less than twenty-five persons in the same 
general line of business, relating to the following 
subjects: 

(1) Wages, allowances, or remuneration of 
persons employed or to be employed. 

(2) Hours of employment, sex, age, qualifi- 
cations, or status of employees, and the mode, 
terms, and conditions of employment. 

(3) Established custom or usage of any 
industry. 

(4) Claim of members of a union to be 
employed in preference to or to the exclusion 
of non-union members. 

The Court in its decisions should leave the 
employer free to employ labor if he so desires; 
it should leave the working man free to work or 
not, as he may desire. But it should say to the 
employer: "You must pay the wage determined 
for the number of hours of labor decided by the 
Court to constitute a day's work, or you must 
cease to employ labor. If you disobey, you will 



184 Vital American Problems 

be in contempt of court and be liable to a fine 
or imprisonment." And the Court should say to 
the employee: "You must work for the wage 
and the hours determined or you must seek em- 
ployment elsewhere and not interfere with the 
men who are willing to work on the terms set 
forth in the award. If you disobey, you will be 
in contempt of court and be liable to a fine or 
imprisonment." 

By " interference " is meant: 

(a) The use of opprobrious or insulting lan- 
guage, such as "scab," to one who has succeeded 
or who is attempting to succeed to his position. 

(b) The use of force or threats of personal 
injury, or other means of intimidation to work- 
ing men or to members of their families. 

(c) The hindering, blocking, or stopping of the 
business of the employer. 

(d) The printing or circulating of any notice 
of boycott, boycott cards, stickers, dodgers, or 
" unfair" lists, publishing or declaring that a 
boycott or ban exists or has existed or is con- 
templated against any employer doing a lawful 
business. 

(e) The displaying of banners and the printing 
or circulating of handbills and circulars of any 
kind as a means of threat or intimidation to those 
employed or seeking employment. 

(/) The placing of a patrol or picket in front 
of an employer's place of business, office, factory, 



Labor Problem 185 

mine, or store, or loitering about the employer's 
premises in order to prevent the persons employed 
from continuing therein, or to deter others from 
seeking or taking employment, or to induce 
customers to trade elsewhere, or to, in any 
manner, interfere with any lawful business of the 
employer. 

It is a grave question whether this provision in 
all its subdivisions would be upheld as constitu- 
tional. According to the trend of present-day 
decisions, its constitutionality in some aspects 
is doubtful. But, for the purpose of awakening 
and forming a public opinion on this subject, 
it would seem advisable to enact this provision 
into law, even if some of the features should prove 
unenforceable; for public opinion in the United 
States when focused on a given subject is the most 
powerful regulation and deterrent under our 
governmental system. 

The Court should recognize the existence of 
labor unions. Labor has a right to combine and 
to associate for the purpose of raising the standard 
of living, and to choose the class of men with 
whom its members shall work. As the laws of 
most of the States provide that the employer 
shall not be liable for any injury suffered by his 
employee, if such injury is due to the carelessness or 
negligence of a co-employee, to deny to the work- 
ing man the right to choose his co-laborers would 
be an act of injustice which no court should uphold. 



1 86 Vital American Problems 

Former Chief Justice Parker of the New York 
Court of Appeals, in the case of National Pro- 
tective Association of Steam Fitters and Helpers 
v. Cumming, wisely said: 

11 Their restriction of membership to those who have 
stood a prescribed test must have the effect of securing 
careful as well as skilful associates in their work, and 
that is a matter of no small importance in view of the 
state of the law which absolves the master from liabil- 
ity for injuries sustained by a workman through the 
carelessness of a co-employee. So long as the law 
compels the employee to bear the burden of the in- 
jury in such cases, it cannot be open to question but 
that a legitimate and necessary object of societies like 
the defendant association would be to assure the lives 
and limbs of their members against the negligent acts 
of a reckless co-employee ; and hence it is clearly within 
the right of an organization to provide such a method 
of examination and such tests as will secure a careful 
and competent membership, and to insist that protec- 
tion of life and limb requires that they shall not be 
compelled to work with men whom they have not 
seen fit to admit into their organization. ... It is 
well known that some men, even in the presence of 
danger, are perfectly reckless of themselves and care- 
less of the rights of others, with the result that acci- 
dents are occurring almost constantly which snuff 
out the lives of workmen as if they were candles, or 
leave them to struggle through life maimed and help- 
less. These careless, reckless men are known to their 
associates, who not only have the right to protect 
themselves from such men, but in the present state 



Labor Problem 187 

of the law it is their duty through their organizations 
to attempt to do it, as to the trade affording special 
opportunities for mischief arising from recklessness. 

" I know it is said in another opinion in this case that 
'workmen cannot dictate to employers how they 
shall carry on their business, nor whom they shall or 
shall not employ/ but I dissent absolutely from that 
proposition, and assert that, so long as workmen must 
assume all the risk of injury that may come to them 
through the carelessness of co-employees, they have 
the moral and legal right to say that they will not 
work with certain men, and their employer must take 
their dictation or go without their services/ ' x 

Such rights the Industrial Court should recog- 
nize to this extent : It should permit the union to 
refuse to allow its members to work with non-un- 
ion men ; it should not permit the union to order 
a strike or to interfere with non-union men if an 
employer chooses to employ non-union men; it 
should provide in its decisions that the employer 
should not employ non-union men without first 
giving to the union employees a two-weeks notice 
of his determination so to do. This notice would 
enable the employees to secure other positions, 
and at the same time the employer would have 
ample time to provide a new working force. If 
the employer should employ a non-union man 
where only union men are employed, without 
giving such two-weeks notice, he should be liable 

1 170 N. Y. Reports, p. 315 (1902). 



1 88 Vital American Problems 

to a fine, followed by imprisonment if such fine is 
not paid. 

The union can control its members — it can 
fine, suspend, or expel the one who works for less 
than the minimum wage it has agreed upon; 
but if the employer is free to employ the expelled 
members, the discipline of the union is gone. 
The closed-shop restriction is the necessary pro- 
tection for the maintenance of the minimum 
wage. 

The Court should recognize the right of employ- 
ers to discharge their employees, and should 
not permit any interference on the part of labor 
unions in this regard. The employer should be as 
free to discharge as to employ; and the laborer 
who claims the right to work or to quit work must 
recognize and respect this right. This right is 
admitted by John Mitchell, who has written, 
"The unionist has no vested interest in his job, 
and the non-unionist may legally take it when- 
ever an opportunity presents." 

The Anthracite Strike Commission voiced the 
opinion of the American people on this subject 
in these words : 

" The right to remain at work where others have 
ceased to work, or to engage anew in work which 
others have abandoned, is part of the personal liberty 
of a citizen, that can never be surrendered, and every 
infringement thereof merits, and should receive, the 
stern denouncement of the law. All government 



Labor Problem 189 

implies restraint, and it is not less, but more, necessary 
in self-governing communities than in others to com- 
pel restraint of the passions of men which make for 
disorder and lawlessness. Our language is the lan- 
guage of a free people, and fails to furnish any form of 
speech by which the right of a citizen to work where he 
pleases, for whom he pleases, and on what terms he 
pleases, can be successfully denied. The common- 
sense of our people, as well as the common law, forbids 
that this right should be assailed with impunity. It 
is vain to say that the man who remains at work while 
others cease to work, or takes the place of one who 
has abandoned his work, helps to defeat the aspira- 
tions of men who seek to obtain better recompense 
for their labor, and better conditions of life. Ap- 
proval of the object of a strike, or persuasion that its 
purpose is high and noble, cannot sanction an attempt 
to destroy the right of others to a different opinion 
in this respect, or to interfere with their conduct in 
choosing to work upon what terms and at what 
time and for whom it may please them so to 
do. 

" The right thus to work cannot be made to depend 
upon the approval or disapproval of the personal 
character and conduct of those who claim to exercise 
this right. If this were otherwise, then those who 
remain at work might, if they were in the majority, 
have both the right and the power to prevent others, 
who choose to cease work, from so doing. 

" This all seems too plain for argument. Common 
sense and common law alike denounce the conduct 
of those who interfere with this fundamental right 
of the citizen. The assertion of the right seems 



190 Vital American Problems 

trite and commonplace, but that land is blessed where 
the maxims of liberty are commonplace/' l 

It would be well to remember this fact, stated 
so clearly by Nicholas Paine Gilman : * ' In a lock- 
out the employer discharges his workmen from 
being his employees. In a strike the workmen 
discharge him from being their employer/ ' 2 

The Court should not in its decisions require 
any radical change to be made in the manner in 
which employers conduct their business. Such 
changes as justice may require should be pre- 
scribed by acts of the Legislature. The Court 
should allow the employer to make such rules 
for the management of his business as he sees fit, 
without interference by the judiciary. 

In determining the minimum wage to be paid 
to employees, the Court should take into consider- 
ation three classes of evidence: First; the cus- 
tomary wage paid in the industry; second, the 
cost and standard of living; third, the ability 
of the employer to pay a higher wage, irrespective 
of previous rates and the necessary expenses of 
the working men. 

When an Industrial Court fixes a minimum 
wage, it necessarily bases its decision upon a 
certain quantity and quality of work which 
should be fully set forth in its decree. The Indus- 
trial Court should merely establish that the 

1 Report, p. 75. 

* Methods of Industrial Peace, p. 249. 



Labor Problem 191 

employer in question shall not pay less wages 
than the sum named for work of a prescribed 
quantity and quality. Its decision should not 
preclude an inquiry by the ordinary courts into 
the question of the workman's compliance or non- 
compliance with the quantity or quality of the 
work stated. If an employee sues his employer 
in a court of law for the minimum wage, he must 
prove that his work in quantity and quality is 
equal to that prescribed by the decree of the 
Industrial Court; if his work be inferior in these 
respects, he should recover a smaller sum of wages. 
If an employer is prosecuted in the ordinary 
courts upon the charge of paying less than the 
minimum wage to his employees, the government 
must prove not only the payment of less than the 
minimum wage but also that the work performed 
by the employee was equal to the standard pre- 
scribed by the Industrial Court; and if the gov- 
ernment fails to prove these facts, the accused 
employer should be found not guilty. These 
provisions will protect the employer from the 
injustice of being compelled by law to pay stand- 
ard wages for work below the standard, and 
renders the law of the Industrial Court just and 
equitable. 

In the course of a trial or investigation, the 
Industrial Court should make all suggestions and 
do all such things as appear to the judges to be 
right and proper to secure a fair and amicable 



*9 2 Vital American Problems 

settlement of the industrial dispute; and, in the 
event of an agreement being reached by the 
parties in difference, the Court should enter its 
decree according to the terms of settlement. 

The decision of a majority of the members 
present at a sitting of the Court should be the 
decision of the Court. 

The decision of the Court should be binding for 
a period of from one to two years. The progress 
of industry necessarily causes inequalities. Prices 
change. The wages of a given period may after 
a time have more or less value as a purchasing 
power. The earnings of the employer may increase 
so that he ought to pay higher wages ; his earnings 
may decrease to a point where he must pay less 
or go out of business. The rate established to-day 
may be fair and satisfactory to both parties, but 
in a short time may become unfair and unsatis- 
factory. Wages and profits are continually 
changing, so a decision binding longer than two 
years might work injustice. 

When the Court awards an increase of wages, 
the time for the award to take effect should 
depend upon the contracts made by the employer. 
It would be unjust to an employer to compel 
him to pay a higher rate of wages after he has 
entered into contracts based on a lower scale, 
unless it is clearly apparent that he has entered 
into such contracts to forestall a decision of the 
Industrial Court. 



Labor Problem 193 

The officers of corporations should be person- 
ally liable for all fines imposed upon the cor- 
poration and for all violations of the orders of the 
Court, to the same extent as an individual em- 
ployer of labor ; and every employer, worker, or 
person committing or concerned in committing, a 
violation of the Court's orders, should be liable 
to a penalty. 

An appeal to the Court should act as a stay 
of all proceedings whatsoever in the dispute; no 
employer shall close his works or dismiss his 
workers, and no employee shall strike or discon- 
tinue any work of his employer, on pain of being 
treated as in contempt of court ; the relationship 
of employer and employee shall continue uninter- 
rupted by the dispute or anything arising out of 
the dispute. This prohibition, however, should 
not extend to the suspension or discontinuance 
of any industry or of the working of any persons 
therein for any cause not constituting a lockout 
or a strike. 

For an employer to declare or cause a lockout 
after an appeal has been taken to the Industrial 
Court, or for an employee to go on a strike after 
such appeal has been taken, such act should be 
made by statute illegal and, in addition, be con- 
sidered as a contempt of court and the guilty 
parties should be punished by a fine. 

It is somewhat doubtful, under the present 
trend of decisions, whether this provision would 
13 



194 Vital American Problems 

be upheld by the courts as constitutional. For 
the good of the community, laws have recently 
been enacted and upheld as constitutional which 
invade the rights and privileges heretofore enjoyed 
by the individual, and regulate even the degree 
of personal liberty which citizens may enjoy. 
Laws are in force which regulate the home life so 
that the neighbors might not be annoyed, which 
compel the sending of children to school, whatever 
may be the wishes of the parents, which provide 
how a man must build his house, his factory, and 
his theatre, and even prescribe the clothes a man 
must wear. From analogous reasons, the peace 
and quiet of the community require that all indus- 
trial conflicts should be forestalled and prevented. 
If such power could not be legally vested in the 
Industrial Court, the scathing denunciation of 
public opinion must serve as a penalty for the 
creating of a strike or a lockout after the subject 
of dispute has been brought before the Industrial 
Court. 

" No amount of reliance on the ' sacred right of free 
contract/ " declares Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, " will in 
the long run prevent society from asserting its para- 
mount claims to the maintenance of industrial peace. 
No community will permanently brook opposition to 
these plain dictates of self-preservation and social 
progress/ ' 1 

The awards of the Industrial Court should not 

1 Principles of Economics, p. 447. 



Labor Problem 195 

be set aside for any informality, or be appealed 
from, reviewed, quashed, or called in question by 
any tribunal whatever. But the Court should 
have power to reconsider its hearings, and either 
side should be permitted to present a petition, 
upon notice to its opponent, praying for a rehear- 
ing. If sufficient grounds be shown, the mat- 
ter should be reopened. Thus the possibility of 
injustice being done would be minimized. 

The government should be in a position to 
say to the employer and employee: 

11 You must get together and peaceably settle 
your dispute. You will not be allowed to fight 
out your question of difference, thereby disturb- 
ing business conditions, sacrificing human life, 
and destroying private property. The public 
must and shall be protected. 

" If you do not voluntarily settle your contro- 
versy, the Industrial Court will settle it for you." 

The fear of compulsory arbitration, represented 
by the Industrial Court, would be a constant 
menace to both employer and employee. Neither 
party, ordinarily, would dare to have the Indus- 
trial Court adjust their differences and render 
a judgment which would be enforced by a fine 
or imprisonment; and, rather than submit their 
affairs to such a tribunal, industrial agreements 
would undoubtedly be entered into and the 
employer and employee would work together 
on an established basis, without fear of a strike 



196 Vital American Problems 

or a lockout, and without bringing injury to the 
general public. 

The proposed Industrial Court as heretofore 
outlined is but a modification of the laws of New 
Zealand, Victoria, and other colonies of Australia, 
modified so as to bring them within the spirit of 
American jurisprudence and American principles 
of liberty. The main features of the plan here 
presented have been tested by experience, and the 
results have exceeded the fondest expectations 
of those who framed the original laws. 

Judge Blackhouse, who was commissioned in 
1901, by the government of New South Wales, 
to inquire into the working of compulsory con- 
ciliation and arbitration laws in New Zealand, 
Victoria, and other colonies, after exhaustive 
local inquiries, reported as follows: 

"The act has prevented strikes of any magnitude 
and has, on the whole, brought about a better relation 
between employers and employees than would exist 
if there was no act. It has enabled the increase 
of wages and the other conditions favorable to the 
workmen, to which, under the circumstances of the 
colony, they are entitled, to be settled without that 
friction and bitterness of feeling which otherwise 
might have existed; it has enabled employers, for a 
time at least, to know with certainty the conditions of 
production and therefore to make contracts with the 
knowledge that they would be able to fulfil them; 
and indirectly it has tended to a more harmonious 



Labor Problem 197 

feeling among the people generally which must have 
worked for the weal of the colony. A very large 
majority of the employers of labor whom I inter- 
viewed are in favor of the principle of the act. . . . 
The awards generally have been in favor of the 
workers, and it is therefore easy to understand that 
the unionists to a man believe in the act, and, as I 
have already mentioned, the non-unionists, as far as 
my observation goes, find no fault with it." 

The Victorian Commission of 1902-03 reported, 
after their investigation of the operation and 
effect of the compulsory arbitration laws of New 
Zealand, as follows: 

"Despite certain defects in detail which have been 
revealed by experience, the New Zealand Conciliation 
and Arbitration Acts remain to-day the fairest, the 
most complete, and the most useful labor law on the 
statute-books of the Australasian States. ... It 
has the great merit of providing effective means 
for preserving unimpaired the industrial relationship 
of employer and worker, in forbidding the miserable 
warfare which displays itself in strikes and lockouts, 
and the stern reprisals which too often accompany 
them, while ample opportunity is given for concilia- 
tory methods of settling disputes before compulsion 
is invoked. 

"The law may fairly be said to have passed success- 
fully through its period of probation. Its main 
principles have stood the test of time, and, while 
employers and workers alike keenly criticise each 
other's actions in connection with its operation in 



198 Vital American Problems 

certain industrial centres, in no part of the colony 
which we visited did we hear any general desire 
expressed for its repeal. Many suggestions were, 
indeed, made for minor alterations, but they were 
put forward with the view of improving the general 
administration of the act, while preserving its main 
principles in their integrity. ftl 

Victor S. Clark, Ph.D., an investigator of wide 
experience and sound judgment, in his report to 
the United States Bureau of Labor in 1903, on 
" Labor Conditions in New Zealand,' ' says: 

"The industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 
of New Zealand has proved in operation an exceed- 
ingly powerful and comprehensive instrument for 
submitting private industry to public regulation and 
control. . . . While it is neither candid nor literally 
true to call New Zealand a land without strikes, no 
serious labor disturbances of this character have 
arisen since the arbitration law went into effect. . . . 
The true statement of the case is that, while there 
have been difficulties of this character, they have 
been as a rule exceedingly unimportant; they have 
not occurred among workers directly subject to 
the act, and with the extension of the jurisdiction 
of the court through amendments to the law to cover 
allied industries and the increasing number of awards 
and the growth of organization among the workers, 
such troubles as have occurred are becoming more 
and more rare. . . . 

"It would seem to an observer coming from out- 

1 Report, pp. 23, 24. 



Labor Problem 199 

side the colony that the effect of the arbitration law 
upon industrial development and general business 
prosperity has been very greatly exaggerated by 
both its advocates and its opponents. . . . Opinion, 
therefore, is evidently divided, but working men as 
a class are in favor of, and employers as a class are 
opposed to, the present arbitration law. . . . 

** Still, it is doubtful if there is an employer of im- 
portance in New Zealand who would return volunta- 
rily to the system of strikes. They would amend and 
modify, probably entirely remodel, the present legis- 
lation, but they would retain in some form or other 
its essential principle. Public opinion in the colony 
has been cultivated into a position where it would 
hardly tolerate again a free fight between employers 
and employees. This feeling was voiced by a man of 
much local prominence, an employer of a large amount 
of labor under the act, and one of the most intelligent 
and consistently logical and dispassionate opponents 
of the present labor legislation in the colony. At the 
close of the conversation he was asked: ' Would you 
repeal the present laws in such a way as to make 
strikes the only ultimate method of settling industrial 
disputes?' He thought a moment, and then replied: 
1 1 was in Chicago recently, when your building trades 
were on a strike. I saw armed men standing at the 
corners of your new Federal Building there, to protect 
the workmen from the strikers. No, I don't want to 
see a change of our laws that will permit of such 
conditions here. . . .' 

"The law has not been a failure, though many in- 
conveniences have been experienced from its work- 
ings. It has accustomed the community to the idea 



200 Vital American Problems 

of making law supreme in industrial disputes, and 
this is an idea that will not easily disappear. With 
all its apparent defects the act is a success beyond 
the expectation of many of its early supporters. 
Practical legislators have considered it worth trans- 
planting, with modifications not impairing its essen- 
tial principle, to several of the states of the Australian 
commonwealth. There, meeting new conditions, 
many of them more similar to our own than those pre- 
vailing in New Zealand, the law is almost certain to 
be further modified in practical application, and 
still more completely adapted to the diverse condi- 
tions of modern industrial life. One concludes an 
investigation with this conviction: that a line of 
legislation has been started in New Zealand to remedy 
one of our greatest industrial evils that will in all 
probability continue to expand and develop from 
its present tentative and experimental condition 
until it has solved, or greatly contributed toward 
solving, so far as the collective will of society can, the 
problem that brought it forth." i 

The reports of Judge Blackhouse, the Victorian 
Commission, and Mr. Clark cannot be criticised 
as being partial, unfair or prejudiced; they 
voice the competent and disinterested testimony 
of all observers. A system which has had ten 
years of continuous success in New Zealand, a 
country of whose population 95 per cent, is Eng- 
lish and where education is free and universal, 
and intelligence is general, certainly ought to 

1 Bulletin No. 49, pp. 1227, 1228, 1235, 1248, 1255. 



Labor Problem 201 

commend favorably to the American mind the 
principles of conciliation and compulsory arbi- 
tration as a just, equitable, and common-sense 
method of settling labor differences and conflicts. 



THE NEGRO PROBLEM 



203 



THE PROBLEM 

FIFTY years ago, the American negro was but 
a few generations removed from savagery. 
At that time he was living in a state of slavery, 
wherein every aspiration toward a higher life and 
every inclination to improve himself, morally or 
intellectually, were crushed out by his master. 
Marriage, according to the Christian idea, was 
practically unknown, 1 and when contracted was 
neither recognized nor protected by law, the sale 
of a slave away from his home and family being 
"a virtual decree of divorce and so recognized, 
not only by usage, but by the deliberate decree 

1 Major Sargent, in an appendix to a report to the Freed- 
men's Bureau on his district in Arkansas, gives extracts 
from the order book of a Mr. C, a planter in that State. 
The book contains instructions to his overseer, and was 
found in his house, which he had abandoned on the approach 
of the Union forces. One extract is as follows: "The planta- 
tion is to produce 400 bales of cotton, 40,000 pounds of pork, 
50 stacks of oats, 75 stacks fodder, 8 stacks millet, ten Negro 
Children." He then arranges for producing the children by 
ordering the pairing of "Henry and Susan, Cambridge and 
Matilda, Sandy and Yellow Kitty," etc. 

205 



206 Vital American Problems 

of the churches." 1 All attempts on his part to 
found a home modelled after the white man's 
were discouraged. Religious and educational 
training were not only withheld from him, but in 
many States the imparting of religious instruction 
to the negro was prohibited by law, and in the six- 
teen slave-holding States of the South the teach- 
ing of the "three R's" to the slave was punished 
as a crime, the penalty being a fine, imprisonment, 
or whipping. 2 And in the absence of statute law, 
public opinion in all the Southern States forbade 
the education of the negro. Work on his part 
was never free and spontaneous, but was enforced 
under the lash of the overseer's whip. 

Lacking education, even in its rudimentary 
branches, knowing but little religion save the 
superstitions imported from Africa, having no 
conception of the meaning of morality, possessing 
no home life based on the marriage relation, look- 
ing upon work as an enforced tax, the American 

1 The Negro Church Report of 8th Atlanta University 
Conference, p. 56. 

2 In 1832 the law of Alabama provided that "Any person 
or persons who shall attempt to teach any free person of 
color or slave to spell, read, or write, shall, upon conviction 
thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than $250 
and not more than $500." The Georgia statute of 1829 P ro " 
vided for a punishment by fine, whipping, or imprisonment 
for teaching a negro to read or write, while the States of 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Missouri, and 
Virginia had laws forbidding the teaching of negroes. The 
States of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee by law 
excluded negroes from the schools. 



The Negro Problem 207 

negro was but an untutored child of nature when 
Abraham Lincoln, on January 1, 1863, issued his 
Emancipation Proclamation. 

Before the negro had time to realize what eman- 
cipation truly meant to him, before the chains of 
slavery had in fact been stricken from his body, 
the Federal Constitution was amended and citi- 
zenship with full political privileges was conferred 
upon him. 

The sudden transition of the unlettered, unciv- 
ilized, pagan negro from the position of slave — a 
position he had occupied in this country for 245 
years — to that of freedom and political prestige, 
without preparation of any kind on his part, nat- 
urally engendered unwholesome aspirations and 
un-American tendencies. The first effects of 
emancipation are always harmful to the moral and 
physical well-being of the liberated class. The 
transition of the life of any people from a state 
of conscious and willing obedience to one of self- 
directing manhood, is invariably a period of 
danger. The removal of physical restraints, be- 
fore moral restraints have grown strong enough 
to take their place, must inevitably result in 
misconduct. To the average negro, freedom 
meant freedom from labor. Idleness at once 
became his greatest pleasure. To be a gentle- 
man of leisure, to leave the plough idle and the hoe 
untouched, and to meet with other negroes in the 
streets, and to spend the day in loafing, chatting, 



208 Vital American Problems 

shouting, oftentimes in drinking, dancing, and 
fighting, was his way of enjoying his freedom. 
The license of freedom was the only feature that 
appealed to him. 

Most of the negroes were inoculated with the 
idea expressed by the socialist Bax : ' ' Labor is an 
evil to be minimized to the utmost. The man who 
works at his trade or vocation more than neces- 
sity compels him ... is not a hero but a fool." 1 

The American negro entered on his career of 
freedom without the ownership of real property 
or possessions of any kind save the tattered gar- 
ments upon his body. He was without capable 
self-direction and without the provident oversight 
which responsible ownership gives. He had no 
aspiration to create, and no ambition to enter a 
trade. General Grant, in his report of December 
ii, 1865, to President Johnson, as to the work of 
the Freedmen's Bureau, said: 

" The belief widely spread among the freedmen of 
the Southern States that the lands of their former 
owners will, at least in part, be divided among them, 
has come from the agents of this Bureau. This be- 
lief is seriously interfering with the willingness of the 
freedmen to make contracts for the coming year. . . . 
Many, perhaps the majority, of the agents of the 
Freedmen's Bureau advise the freedmen that by 
their own industry they must expect to live. ... In 
some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman's mind 

1 Religion of Socialism, p. 94. 



The Negro Problem 209 

does not seem to be disabused of the idea that he had 
a right to live without care or provision for the future. 
The effect of the belief in the division of lands is idle- 
ness and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities.' ' 

Legislation made the negro a legal citizen, but 
it did not educate him to the point of living the 
life of a strong, valuable citizen; it gave him a 
legal right to vote, but it did not teach him how 
to vote intelligently. And unscrupulous poli- 
ticians, realizing his ignorance and his childishness, 
at once began a crusade to debauch him. They 
flattered him on his equality with his former white 
masters, and taught him that votes were a com- 
modity to be bought and sold, and they thereby 
obtained for themselves political power, while the 
seeds sown have brought forth the fruitage the 
South is unhappily reaping to-day. 

If as a result of the changed social and economic 
conditions, and the altered environment, the 
negro had developed otherwise than he has, the 
race itself must have had fuller intuitional know- 
ledge and greater strength of character than has 
been possessed by any other race in the history 
of the world. Unfortunately, this people were 
naturally no better and no worse than were many 
of the races of the earth in the same stage of devel- 
opment, which races are now classed among the 
present-day civilized nations. 

The twentieth century found the American 
negro race (of course with many striking excep- 



210 Vital American Problems 

tions) ignorant, poor, and lazy. It saw supersti- 
tion of the grossest type held tenaciously by a large 
portion of the race, with uncleanliness almost 
universal, and immorality rampant. It witnessed 
the fiery race antagonisms which retarded the 
negroes' advancement and which often found vent 
in the use of the faggot, the rope, and the shot-gun. 
It beheld the dark, portentous clouds raised by 
politicians to keep the negroes from exercising their 
political rights as citizens, and it heard the dire 
warnings raised to engender hatred toward the 
negro and to force him back into virtual slavery. 
Such are some of the present-day evils surround- 
ing the negro in the Southern States. 

In considering the negro in his relation to the 
social, industrial, and political life of our nation, 
we must accept the facts — the cold, hard facts — 
as they exist. The negro is here in America, and 
he is here to stay. The nine millions in the South 
are increasing so rapidly in number — to wit, about 
150,000 a year 1 — as to preclude the serious con- 

1 The following table of negro population and rate of in- 
crease is based on Census Bulletin 8, Negroes in the United 
States, p. 29: 



Date of Cen- 


Population. 


Increase dur- 


Per cent, of 


sus. 




ing preceding 


increase dur- 






10 years. 


ing preceding 


i860 


4,440,000 




10 years. 


1870 


4,880,000 


440,000 


9-9 


1880 


6,580,000 


1,700,000 


349 


1890 


7,480,000 


900,000 


J 3-5 


1900 


8,830,000 


1,350,000 


18.0 



Walter F. Wilcox, " Probable Increase of the Negro Race 



The Negro Problem 211 

sideration of their deportation. Experience has 
demonstrated that the negroes are unwilling to 
return to the lands from which our forefathers 
brought them. To deport the negro against his 
will, with our knowledge that exported Africans 
lose in a short time their power of resistance to the 
climatic and malarial conditions of the Dark Con- 
tinent, and that the second and third generations 
of exported negroes have no greater power of 
resistance to its life-sapping, fever-laden atmos- 
phere than have the pure white races, would be 
an iniquity which no civilized people would per- 
petrate. But Southerners would not deport the 
race, even if they could, for it is to the toil of the 
negro that they owe the greater part of the agri- 
cultural products of ten States, and nearly one 
sixth of the entire tillage of this country. The 
negro race in America will not die out; it has 
increased from four and a half millions to nine 
millions in forty years. Neither will it be exter- 
minated by internal feuds or conflicts with its 
white neighbors; it will remain a separate race 
and will not be absorbed by any process of 
intermarriage ; it will never again be reduced to 
slavery, but will remain free and will, to a very 
large extent, dwell in the South. The negro peo- 
ple are so intricately interwoven into all South- 
ern industries that the South cannot profitably 

in the United States," vol. 19, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 
p. 547. 



212 Vital American Problems 

supplant them, or go forward without their 
aid. 

The negro and the white race in the South are 
indissolubly linked together in many ways, and 
on the welfare of the one depends the welfare of 
tne other. The low standard of living among the 
negroes keeps down the wages of all classes of 
whites. So long as the negro is content to live 
in a miserable hut, dress in rags, and subsist upon 
hog-fat and cow-peas, so long must the wages of 
the white man engaged in the same kind of work 
be pressed toward the same level. The higher the 
standard of living among the negroes, the higher 
will be the wages of the white people in the same 
occupation. The negroes' propensity to crime is 
a constant incitement to the criminal tendencies 
of the white man. The crimes of one race provoke 
counter-crimes on the part of the other. The 
physical weakness and uncleanliness of one race 
affect the well-being of the other, as diseases are 
easily spread and contagion is not limited to the 
color of the skin. 

In 1899, when the last census was taken, negro 
farmers in the United States owned 23,383 square 
miles of territory, a territory as large as that of 
Holland and Belgium combined, which supports 
12,000,000 people. 

In 1907 the negro paid taxes upon more than 
$354,000,000 worth of property, upon which stand 
over 500,000 houses occupied by him. 



The Negro Problem 213 

The negro belongs to an undeveloped race and 
is many centuries behind his white competitor 
in the cultivation of those qualities which make 
for progress. 

A generation of estrangement has almost com- 
pletely destroyed the point of attachment between 
the races which had existed under the slave regime, 
and their relationship is daily becoming less inti- 
mate and friendly and is growing more business- 
like and formal. 

Such being the almost undisputed facts, the 
question of the development of the negro race 
alongside of the white American is one full of 
complexities, uncertainties, and dangers. But the 
light of history has furnished suggestions on the 
manner of the development of other races, so that 
the American people are not left entirely in the 
dark as to the methods to adopt. Then, again, 
experiments have been made and the results care- 
fully watched, measured, and tabulated so that 
well-defined facts have been deduced through the 
use of which the American negro may grow into 
a citizen worthy ultimately to take his place by 
the side of his white neighbor. 



II 

THE SOLUTION 
I— EDUCATION 

(A) Universal Education. — History clearly 
and distinctly teaches that every people that has 
succeeded in governing itself has been one of gen- 
eral intelligence. Not a single instance is re- 
corded where a people without a high degree of 
intelligence has for any length of time maintained 
a democracy. When a few citizens are intelligent 
and the great mass of the members who compose 
the society are lacking in intelligence, the inevit- 
able result has been and always will be that power 
will centre in the hands of the few intelligent 
members, and imperialism will take the place of 
democracy. 

If the social mind is ignorant, then public opin- 
ion will be wrong in its premises and social life 
will be on a low plane. No society will be pro- 
gressive and self-sustaining whose public opinion 
is not strong and elevated. This result requires 
a general intelligence based on universal educa- 
tion. While it is true that in any community a 

214 



The Negro Problem 215 

few of the intelligent members create public opin- 
ion, it is also a well-recognized fact that unless the 
mass of the people have sufficient intelligence to 
absorb and assimilate the ideas of the leaders, the 
social life will be under the control of the ideas 
dominating the majority. 

The dangers which ignorance brings on society 
are well illustrated in the poem "Whose Is the 
Fault ?" written by Victor Hugo by the lurid light 
of burning Paris in 1871: 

" Addressing an incendiary, caught in the very act, 
he says, 'You come from burning the Library?' 
'Yes, I set fire to that.' 'But it is an unheard-of 
crime! — a crime committed by yourself against your- 
self, infamous creature ! ' 

"Then, with impetuous, uncontrollable eloquence, 
he recited all that books are, and all they have done 
and can do for the slave, the unhappy, 'for know- 
ledge comes first to man, then comes liberty'; and 
he portrays in impassioned words what these treas- 
ures would have been to the man himself; at last, 
pausing from his tumultuous speech, he turns upon 
the wretch with an apostrophe that should be over- 
whelming, ' And you, you destroy all this ! ' To this 
terrible accusation the man, unmoved, simply replies, 
'I cannot read'!" 1 

The ignorant man is not only a dead weight, 
but a positive opponent of social progress. Being 

1 American Education in the Industrial and Fine Arts, by- 
Isaac Edward Clarke, Part I., p. ex. 



216 Vital American Problems 

unable to comprehend the advantages of a higher 
civilization which appeal to the intelligent, he is 
content to live and move and have his being amid 
the conditions in which he was bred. 

Rew Henry Ward Beecher, in his lecture on 
1 'The Reign of the Common People, " has voiced 
the almost universal opinion of students of racial 
development on this subject: 

" It is held that it is unsafe for a State to raise igno- 
rant men. Ignorant men are like bombs, which are 
a great deal better to be shot into an enemy's camp 
than to be kept at home, for when an ignorant man 
goes off he scatters desolation; and it is not safe to 
have ignorant men, for an ignorant man is an ani- 
mal, and the stronger his passions, and the feebler his 
conscience and intellect, the more dangerous he is. 
Therefore, for the sake of the Commonwealth, our 
legislators wisely, whether they be republican institu- 
tions or monarchical institutions or aristocratical insti- 
tutions, have at last joined hands on one thing — that 
it is best to educate the people's children, from the 
highest to the lowest, everywhere." 

Education is the only means whereby a man 
may fit himself to become a useful citizen. It 
is, therefore, not only the supreme need but the 
imperial right which belongs not to a particular 
race, or to a particular class, but to every human 
being. If the members of a democracy are to 
rule, they must have the knowledge and wisdom 
which nothing but education can impart. 



The Negro Problem 217 

Hon. James MacAllister, President of Drexel 
Institute, Philadelphia, in an address, "Art Edu- 
cation in the Public Schools," stated these im- 
portant truths : 

" The social condition of man has now reached a 
high degree of complexity. This social condition can 
be protected, can be properly developed, only so far as 
the provisions for education provide for the training of 
youth for their social duties and responsibilities. . . . 
To state the problem in a few words, our duty is so 
to organize the forces that make for right living that 
they shall always be the dominant power in the social 
organization, and it is only when we come to recog- 
nize this condition as fundamental to all growth in 
human well-being that we can get a proper compre- 
hension of what is involved in public education at 
the present time. 

" When the education of the pupil is looked at from 
this point of view, it is seen that its greatest power 
must be exerted where the dangers to the social organ- 
ism are greatest, i. e. y among the very poorest classes. 
There is more need of the refining influences of the 
best education among the debased and neglected ele- 
ments of population in our large cities than among the 
children of the rich and prosperous; and hence the 
movement of the last few years to carry the most 
improved forms of our education among the lowest 
classes is an indication of the growth of public senti- 
ment in the right direction, and is a feeling that will 
undoubtedly grow in strength as social problems are 
more carefully studied." 1 

« Am. Education, Part II., pp. cxxiv., cxxv. 



218 Vital American Problems 

The present high social, economic, and educa- 
tional condition of the United States is due very 
largely to the fact that the founders of the Repub- 
lic p,ut aside as erroneous the prevailing world-wide 
notion that the education of certain special classes 
in a community was all that was required to 
promote the common weal, and firmly implanted 
as a cardinal doctrine that man, instead of a class, 
was the unit of civilization and that democracy 
depended on the recognition of each man as of 
equal worth and importance to every other man, 
and that equality of opportunity is at the bottom 
of social progress. The abolition of the aristo- 
cratic conception of education was the beginning 
of the upward growth of the American people. 

" A community is not rich/' says Walter H. Page, 
" because it contains a few rich men, it is not healthful 
because it contains a few strong men, it is not intelligent 
because it contains a few men of learning, nor is it of 
good morals because it contains good women — if the 
rest of the population also be not well-to-do, or health- 
ful, or intelligent, or of good morals. The common 
people is the class most to be considered in the 
structure of civilization. . . . The security and 
the soundness of the whole body are measured by 
the condition of its weakest part." * 

Republics gain their strength and perpetuity 
from the self-governing force of the people; and 

1 Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths, p. 3. 



The Negro Problem 219 

in order to be self-governing a people must be ed- 
ucated. Moreover, all good laws that are cheer- 
fully obeyed are but the emphatic expression of 
public sentiment. 

It has become a truism in this country that the 
material, as well as the moral prosperity of our 
people depends on their general intelligence , and 
that the teaching of those subjects which excite 
into a healthful exercise the intellectual nature of 
children cannot fail to lay a sure foundation for 
material and moral wealth. And it is upon the 
recognition of this fact that the government pro- 
vides the means for the education of the children 
of the people. The well-known saying of Jules 
Simon, "The first people is that which has the 
best schools ; if it is not the first to-day, it will be 
the first to-morrow/ ! has been fully justified by 
the history of American national education. 

But, not only from a social and political stand- 
point is education of the supremest value, but it 
is also of great importance to man as an economic 
factor. 

Walker, in his Political Economy , * says : 

" Intelligence is a most powerful factor in industrial 
efficiency. The intelligent is more useful than the 
unintelligent laborer: (a) Because he requires a far 
shorter apprenticeship. ... (b) Because he can 
do his work with little or no superintendence. . . . 
(c) Because he is less wasteful of his materials. . . . 

1 Pp. 52, 53- 



220 Vital American Problems 

(/) Because he readily learns to use machinery, 
however delicate or intricate/' 

^ series of investigations, embracing many kinds 
of labor and extending all over the United States, 
entered into by the U. S. Commissioner of Educa- 
tion in 1870, plainly demonstrated the following 
facts * : 

(1) That even such scant measure of education 
as enables one to read print adds sensibly to the 
wage-earning capacity of the laborer in most kinds 
of labor, while ability to read and write with ease 
greatly increases the wage-earning capacity. 

(2) That an average free common-school edu- 
cation, such as is provided in all the States where 
the free common-school has become a permanent 
institution, adds 50 per cent, to the productive 
power of the laborer, considered as a mere pro- 
ductive machine. 

(3) That the average academical education 
adds 100 per cent. 

(4) That the average collegiate or university 
education adds from 200 to 300 per cent, to the 
worker's average productive capacity. 

"Now, surely," said the great educator Horace Mann, 
11 nothing but universal education can counteract this 
tendency to the domination of capital and the servil- 

1 Annual Report of U. S. Comr. of Education for 1870, 
cited with approval by Dr. Jarvis in Circular of the Bureau 
of Education No. 3, 1879, and by I. Edward Clarke in 
American Education. U. S. Educational Report, 1885. 



The Negro Problem 221 

ity of labor. If one class possesses all the wealth and 
the education, while the residue of society is ignorant 
and poor, it matters not by what name the relation 
between them may be called; the latter, in fact and 
in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects 
of the former. But if education be equally diffused, 
it will draw property after it, by the strongest of all 
attractions; for such a thing never did happen, and 
never can happen, as that an intelligent and practical 
body of men should be permanently poor. Property 
and labor in different classes are essentially antago- 
nistic ; but property and labor in the same class are 
essentially fraternal. . . . Education, then, beyond all 
other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer 
of the conditions of men — the balance-wheel of the 
social machinery. ... It does better than disarm the 
poor of their hostility towards the rich ; it prevents 
being poor. Agrarianism is the revenge of poverty 
against wealth. The wanton destruction of the 
property of others ... is only agrarianism run mad. 
Education prevents both the revenge and the 
madness.' ' 

The child is the most valuable undeveloped 
resource of the State. It is the most sacred thing 
in and to a democracy. The child, whether born 
in a mansion or in a hovel, has implanted within 
his body native capacity capable of development 
into the highest type of citizenship. At its worst, 
the child is capable of growing into a useful citizen. 

The future of the State is dependent on the chil- 
dren of the present. They are the units that make 



222 Vital American Problems 

up the State. If the education of the children 
is neglected, the level of civilization will be low- 
ered. The more perfect the education of the child 
ot to-day, the more perfect will be the state of 
to-morrow. 

"The education of the people,' ' said Macaulay, 
" ought to be the first concern of a state, not only be- 
cause it is an efficient means of promoting and 
obtaining that which all allow to be the main end of 
government, but because it is the most efficient, the 
most humane, the most civilized, and in all respects 
the best means of obtaining that end." 

That education is considered an absolute neces- 
sity for citizens of the United States, and for the 
maintenance and stability of our institutions, may 
be seen from an examination of the constitutions 
of the different States of the Union. In all the 
States the Legislature is required by suitable legis- 
lation to encourage and promote the education of 
the youth and to compel those between certain 
ages to attend school. 

"Education is an inalienable right in America, " 
declares Andrew S. Draper, Commissioner of Edu- 
cation for New York State. l 

The courts of England and of the various United 
States have uniformly held that education was a 
necessity for an infant, the same as are food, 
clothing, and shelter. So universal has been the 

1 Journal Nat. Ed. Assn., 1905, p. 97. 



The Xegro Problem 22$ 

support given to the cause of education that the 
people of the United States were startled in 1904 

by the news from Mississippi that Mr. James Varda- 
man had been elected Governor of that State on 
the platform "No white taxes to teach negrc 
In his inaugural delivered January 19, 1904. G 
ernor Vardaman stated that education for the 
negro is a curse; no white man's taxes should 
be wasted on the black man's education: " 
Almighty created the negro for a menial; he is 
essentially a servant" and should be treated 
accordingly. 

There is no denying the fact that many South- 
erners of intelligence have a strong prejudice 
against the education of negroes. But is not the 
basis of this attitude due to the kind of education 
that has been furnished to the negro rather than 
to any intelligent reason for withholding from 
the race the education most needed — the educa- 
tion which will increase his efficiency as a worker, 
develop his character into well-rounded complete- 
ness, and make of the black man a good and val- 
uable citizen ? 

In 1 90 1 a joint investigation into negro skilled 
labor was made by the Chattanooga Tradesman 
and the Sociological Department of Atlanta Uni- 
versity. It was not an exhaustive inquiry and 
there is no way of knowing what proportion of the 
employers of skilled negro laborers were reached. 
The answers of the employers to the question 



224 Vital American Problems 

4 'What effect has education had on the negro 
artisan ?" are as follows: 

Answers. Establishments Negroes em- 
answering, ployed. 

Skilled. Semi- 
skilled. 

"Bad Effect" 16 73 66 

"No effect" 9 134 22 

"A little learning is a dan- 
gerous thing " 4 30 57 

"Little effect " 4 7 13 

"Cannot say" 5 41 — 

" Helps some, hinders others" 5 31 — 

" Would help, if industrial". . . 1 40 — 

"Good effects" 28 257 89 

If the negro is to be without education, he will 
soon drift back into the conditions existing during 
slavery, but without the restraint of the master. 
Without education — of the brain, the heart, and 
the hand — the negro will be nothing more than 
a common, unskilled laborer. Having no associa- 
tion with the whites, no knowledge of books, none 
of the origin, purpose, and sanctity of society, 
of modern economic organizations, of the func- 
tions of government, of individual worth and the 
possibilities of human development, the negro, by 
nature shiftless, improvident, and careless, will 
inevitably reach the condition where indolence 
will take the place of industry, where want will 
induce thievery, and where lassitude will stimulate 
crime. Slowly but surely, the negro, if his educa- 
tion be abandoned, will drop in successive genera- 



The Negro Problem 225 

tions into lower stages of barbarism, if not into 
savagery. As was well said by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, 
"Ignorance is not a remedy for any thing/ ' 

But can the negro be transformed into a law- 
abiding, intelligent, moral, upright citizen? A 
horse captured wild may, by training, become a 
useful adjunct to man. A dog may be taught 
to be the faithful guardian of a sheep pasture. 
Nearly all animals, by proper training, may be 
made useful to man and valuable to society. 

The history of American slavery is the history 
of the training of the negro; and when slavery 
ceased as an institution, the negro had been 
trained to till the soil and to do acceptably the 
work of blacksmithing, wagon-making, carpen- 
tering, brickmaking, painting, and plastering. 

It has been clearly demonstrated that the Amer- 
ican negro has the same besetting infirmities and 
vices as those of the European races under similar 
conditions, and, therefore, how can one who has 
studied the life and history of the negro — a human 
being with a soul, a conscience, and a mind — assert 
that he may not be educated to the point of becom- 
ing a useful member of society? To those who 
think that it is only the white citizen of America 
who has the capacity to grow morally and intel- 
lectually, it is well to remember that not more 
than twenty-five per cent, of the colored people 
of the South are of pure negro origin, and that the 
race is permeated not only by the blood of white 



226 Vital American Problems 

Americans, but by some of the "best white blood " 
of the States in which they were born. 

The but recently ignorant slave, with his primi- 
tive characteristics practically undeveloped, cannot 
reasonably be expected to absorb the culture of his 
former master in half a century ; the development 
/ of a race is a slow process. It took the children 
of Israel four hundred years to recover from their 
Egyptian bondage, and the Germans hundreds 
of years to absorb the Roman culture, while the 
Anglo-American is the product of the upward 
development of the race since time began. 

At the time when the slave trade was at its 
height, the negroes in Africa were living in a state 
approaching savagery. Cannibalism was prev- 
alent; slavery in its worst forms was universal; 
religion was a mass of the grossest superstitions; 
the sexual passions were ungoverned; marriage 
was a living together for a longer or shorter time ; 
human life was subject to the will of the chief; 
social and climatic conditions made accumulations 
of property unnecessary ; and education and cul- 
ture had never entered their life. 

Coming from such a home on the Dark Conti- 
nent, living in the Southland under conditions 
of slavery, and having but a half-century of free- 
dom to develop the native faculties, but little can 
be expected of the race at the present time. 

As a matter of fact, however, there is no dead 
line in education beyond which the American 



The Negro Problem 227 

negro cannot go. Negroes have taken the highest 
honors at Yale, and at Harvard, and at seventy 
other colleges, in competition with white scholars ; 
and over four hundred negroes have received the 
Bachelor's degree from these institutions. 

These evidences of achievement are a clear 
demonstration of the possibilities of the race and 
are an indication of the heights to which this peo- 
ple is capable of attaining. 

To-day, all schoolhouses, of whatever sort, 
opened to the negro in the Southland are crowded 
with pupils willing and anxious to learn, thereby 
evidencing a strong tendency on the part of the 
race to improve and develop intellectually. 

The question of the relative capacity of the 
white and black races as to acquisitive faculties 
and inquisitive power possesses only an academic 
interest. It is sufficient to know that the negro 
possesses the ability to acquire knowledge, to inter- 
pret it in terms of his own thoughts and feel- 
ings, and to apply it effectively to the world' swork. 

Mark the words of our first President, George 
Washington: "Promote, then, as an object of 
primary importance the general diffusion of know- 
ledge. In proportion as the structure of a govern- 
ment gives force to public opinion, it is essential 
that this should be enlightened/ ' And, finally, 
consider the advice of the present occupant of the 
White House, Theodore Roosevelt: 

" The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow 



228 Vital American Problems 

the negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and woman- 
hood without education. Unquestionably education 
such as is obtained in our public schools does not do 
everything toward making a man a good citizen, but 
it does much. The lowest and most brutal criminals, 
those for instance who commit the crime of rape, are 
in the great majority men who have had either no edu- 
cation or very little ; just as they are almost invariably 
men who own no property; for the man who puts 
money by out of his earnings, like the man who ac- 
quires education, is usually lifted above mere brutal 
criminality." * 

Nothing can be more certain than this illumina- 
tive fact that if the white people of the South, the 
people who know the negro thoroughly, and who 
are fully aware of the effects of all the efforts made 
for his improvement, could perceive any dan- 
gerous problem, any evil tendencies arising out 
of the education of the negro, they would not be 
engaged in taxing themselves from one year to 
another in order that he may receive the benefits 
of education. Men will theorize when it costs 
them nothing, but only those will suffer depriva- 
tion who firmly believe in the cause for which 
they give. Every Southern State is appropriat- 
ing money for the education of the negro, and 
there is not a Southern community that is not 
contributing its due share. 

11 Who," asked Thomas Carlyle, " would suppose that 

1 Message to Congress, December 5, 1906. 



The Negro Problem 229 

education were a thing which had to be advocated 
on the ground of local expediency, or, indeed, on any- 
ground? As if it stood not on the basis of everlasting 
duty, as a prime necessity of man. It is a thing which 
needs no advocating. To impart the gift of thinking 
to those who cannot think, and yet who could in that 
case think — this, one would imagine, was the first 
function a government had to set about discharging. 
Were it not a cruel thing to see, in any province of an 
empire, the inhabitants living all mutilated in their 
limbs — each strong man with his right arm lamed? 
How much crueller to find the strong soul with its 
eyes sealed, its eyes extinct, so that it does not see. . . . 
Heavier wrong is not done under the sun." And ex- 
claimed Carlyle: "That one man should die ignorant 
who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy." 

(B) Elementary Schools. — Although the 
negro was freed against the protests of the South, 
no sooner was the emancipation an accomplished 
fact than the Southern white man, though facing 
destitute homes, blasted hopes, shattered indus- 
trial systems, and staggering under his burden of 
poverty, set about the task of educating the col- 
ored man for freedom. Four and a half millions 
of totally uneducated colored people had been 
freed and left upon his hands for assimilation and 
for some form of education, with all but 200,000 of 
the race living south of the Mason and Dixon line. 
This involved the setting up of a double educa- 
tional system, with all the extra expense which 



230 Vital American Problems 

such a plan involved. Heroically he worked in the 
face of odds not equalled in any other part of this 
country, and great was the good he accomplished. 

The Freedmen's Bureau, established by act of 
Congress, March 3, 1865, from 1865 to 1869, with 
the expenditure of $6,513,955, in addition to start- 
ing a system for free labor, of peasant proprietor- 
ship, and of securing the recognition of the colored 
freedman before the courts of law, founded 4239 
free common schools for colored children through- 
out the South, under the direction of 9307 teachers 
and having an enrolment of 247,333 pupils. By 
1870, every Southern State had made constitu- 
tional and legislative provisions for free schools 
and a general system of education. Twelve States 
had some form of control, eight had provided 
for county supervision, normal schools had been 
started in six, agricultural and industrial colleges 
in a still larger number, and progress had been 
made in grading the schools in the large cities. 
It is true that the North had helped in this work 
through the Peabody and other funds, and the 
Federal government had extended its aid; but 
the great bulk of labor and funds came from the 
South itself. Considering that but thirty-five 
years have elapsed since its educational machin- 
ery was really started, magnificent progress has 
been made. 

Since that time the common schools in the South 
have been increasing in number year by year, and 



The Negro Problem 231 

have been improving rapidly in the grade of 
instruction given. 

The United States Commissioner of Education 
has stated that between 1870 and 1900 the South 
disbursed for negro education $109,000,000. 1 

The schools were largely elementary, for the 
work had to be begun at the bottom; but as the 
pupils were ready for them, those of higher grades 
were established, and in 1879, 61 intermediate or 
grammar schools for negroes were in operation 
and 74 high and normal schools, the latter with 
an enrolment of 8174 students. The freedmen 
themselves contributed about one fifth of the 
expense of maintaining these higher schools. The 
remainder of the funds were furnished by the 
Federal government and from private bequests 
from the North. 

Among the many bequests from Northerners 
was that of George Peabody, known as the Pea- 
body Fund. It consisted of $2,000,000, — one half 
given in 1867 and the remainder in 1869. It was 
placed in the hands of trustees with the instruction 
that ' ' the income thereof shall be applied in your 
discretion for the promotion and encouragement 
of intellectual, moral, or industrial education of 
the young of the more destitute portions of the 
Southern and Southwestern States of our Union ; 
my purpose being that the benefits intended 
shall be distributed among the entire population 

1 Report of 1 899-1 900, vol. 2, p. 2501. 



232 Vital American Problems 

without other distinction than that of their needs 
and the opportunities of usefulness to them." This 
fund has been kept well invested under the trustee- 
ship of leading educators, and up to the present 
time it has made available for use for the needy 
public schools nearly $3,000,000. Besides the 
Peabody Fund, there is the Slater Fund of $1,000,- 
000, given by Mr. John W. Slater in 1882, admin- 
istered through a board of trustees and devoted 
largely to the promotion of industrial education; 
and the "Daniel Hand Educational Fund for 
Colored People," of $1,000,894.25, given by Mr. 
Daniel Hand of Guilford, Connecticut, in 1888, 
and which is devoted to general education through- 
out the South under its custodian, The American 
Missionary Association. In 1907, Miss Anna T. 
Jeanes of Philadelphia added a million dollars to 
the amounts already presented, the income of 
which is to be used for the sole purpose of assisting 
in the "Southern United States community, 
country, and rural schools for the great class of 
negroes to whom the small rural and community 
schools are alone available." 

Despite all that has been done, the Sixth At- 
lanta Conference in 1901 said: 

"We call the attention of the nation to the fact 
that less than one million of the three million negro 
children of school age are at present regularly attend- 
ing school, and these attend a session which lasts only 
a few months. . . . Half the black youth of the land 



The Negro Problem 233 

have no opportunities open to them for learning to 
read, write, and cipher.' ' 

This condition is due to the fact that the former 
slave States spend only the sum of $2.21 annually 
per child for educating negroes. 1 

There is, indeed, urgent need for the expansion 
of the education of the young negroes in the South 
if the race is to grow stronger and more civilized, 
and to prevent it from proving a check on the up- 
ward development of the white race and a source 
of weakness in our democratic American form of 
government. 

While the home may be the first school for the 
white child, the home of the black child, except 
in a few instances, furnishes no instruction worthy 
the name. 

Bishop J. L. Spalding has said: 

"The world has made greater progress in the 
practical affairs of life during the last hundred years 
than in any preceding thousand; and the spread of 
enlightenment, diffused by the popular school, is the 
indispensable condition and largely the cause of this 
marvellous material and mechanical advance.' ' 

The mistake must not be made of thinking that 
the subjects taught in the schools for the past hun- 
dred years are, on account of their long retention, 
the most important to be furnished to the negro. 

1 Commissioner of Education, Report of 1 900-1 901, vol. 
1, p. 101. 



Vital American Problems 

Education is a part of life and must continue to 
change as life change editions and require- 

ments change from decade to decade ; the environ- 
ment surrounding an individual alters from 
generation to generation, modifying the lives of 
>e within its embrace; and education must 
likewise become a progressive factor, progressive 
not only in its conception, aims, and ideals, but 
in its means, methods, and applian. 

The studies taught in the common schools 
should be those which bear directly on the need 
of the negro for instruction in self-preservation, 
in self-maintenance, and in the preparation for 
citizenship. The following subjects are suggested 
as those which will best aid in the development 
of the American negro as a man, a worker, and a 
citizen. 

Reading, writing, and arithmetic — the three 
fundamental educational columns upon which 
the temple of useful knowledge is reared — should 
: subjects taught. 

The underlying facts of physiology and the prin- 
ciples of hygiene, as a means to proper living, are of 
intrinsic worth to the American negro. The pres- 
ent ignorant, unsanitary mode of life of the negro 
is causing the spread of disease and is creating a 
large death-rate, which might be avoided by a 
little knowledge supplemented by some care on 
his part. The possession of a knowledge of physi- 
ology and hygiene would not entirely remedy this 



The Negro Problem 235 

evil condition, as the inclinations of many would 
frequently lead them, notwithstanding their know- 
ledge, to sacrifice future good for present gratifica- 
tion; nevertheless, without knowledge of the laws 
of health no improvement will be made, while 
with knowledge much good may be expected to 
follow. 

If, for example, the negro knew that typhoid 
fever is a water-borne disease, that pollution of 
streams is a crime against one's neighbor, and 
that most of the infectious diseases, including the 
great white plague, are preventable, he would 
undoubtedly check the ravages of these diseases 
among his people. The discovery of the germ 
sources of infectious and contagious diseases, and 
of the methods of their carriage from person to 
person, is so recent that it would be strange indeed 
if the negro race had any knowledge of the means 
of stamping out such maladies. 

The compulsory health laws of the various cities 
act as teachers of the elementary principles of 
physiology, but as these laws do not extend to the 
negro settlements scattered throughout the South- 
land, the common school must be selected as the 
place where knowledge of self-preservation should 
be imparted. Carlyle has well said that ' ' health is 
the highest of all temporal blessings." 

A knowledge of geometry being indispensable 
to the surveyor who measures land, to the archi- 
tect who designs buildings, to the builder who 



236 Vital American Problems 

prepares his own estimates, to the mason who 
cuts stone and lays foundations, and to the artisan 
who puts up a building, this subject is essential 
to a large part of the negro race who are engaged 
in these lines of trade. 

Physics being invaluable to the architect, the 
builder, the mason, and the artisan, this subject 
is as important to the negro as is a knowledge 
of geometry. 

Agriculture, the principal occupation of the 
Southern negro, to be carried on profitably in the 
future must be governed by a knowledge of 
chemistry and agricultural chemistry. The analy- 
sis of soils and manures and their adaptations to 
each other, the production of artificial stimulants 
and their proper application to the soil, the know- 
ledge of what plants will enrich instead of drain 
the soil, the rotation of crops as aids to soil fertil- 
ization — are all dependent on an acquaintance 
with chemistry. 

Mr. James J. Hill, in an address on May 14, 1908, 
before the conference of President Roosevelt 
and the Governors of the several States relating 
to the conservation of the natural resources of 
the United States, quoted the following statistics: 

" According to the last census the average annual 
product per acre of the farms of the whole United 
States was worth $11.38. . . . There were but two 
States in the Union whose total value of farm pro- 
ducts was over $30 per acre of improved land. . . . 



The Negro Problem 237 

Nature has given to us the most valuable posses- 
sion ever committed to man. It can never be dupli- 
cated, because there is none like it upon the face 
of the earth. And we are racking and impoverishing 
it exactly as we are felling the forests and rifling the 
mines. 

" Our soil, once the envy of every other country, 
the attraction which draws millions of immigrants 
across the seas, gave an average yield for the whole 
United States during the ten years beginning with 
1896 of 13.5 bushels of wheat per acre. Austria and 
Hungary each produced over seventeen bushels per 
acre, France 19.8, Germany 27.6, and the United 
Kingdom 32.2 bushels per acre. For the same decade 
our average yield of oats was less than 30 bushels, 
while Germany produced 46 and Great Britain 42. 
For barley the figures are 25 against 33 and 34.6; 
for rye, 15.4 against 24 for Germany and 26 for 
Ireland. In the United Kingdom, Belgium, The 
Netherlands, and Denmark a yield of more than 
30 bushels of wheat per acre has been the average for 
the last five years.' ' 

The most approved method of instruction in 
agriculture is well stated by Professor Jordan, 
director of the Maine Agricultural Experiment 
Station: 

"The real and important need of which the farmer 
is conscious is for a knowledge of conditions and not 
for methods or for skill in manipulation. When he 
clearly understands the reason for that which goes 
on about him, the right method will appear. The 



238 Vital American Problems 

difficulties lie with the explanations, not with mechani- 
cal processes. ... It is the explanation of the phe- 
nomena, then, which the extended course of study 
should give in order that the farmer may know how 
to adapt himself to the varying and complete condi- 
tions which he meets in his work." * 

American history should be taught in the 
schools — not the mere recital of facts as set down 
in our average school histories, which give no 
clue to right principles of political action or throw 
light on the science of society ; not the mere chro- 
nological arrangement of names and dates and 
battles, which afford but little help to educate a 
boy to become a judicious voter; but, rather, a 
history covering the discovery of the American 
continent, the organization and structure of our 
government, the lives of its foremost soldiers, 
statesmen, and patriots, the growth of the nation, 
and the principles underlying its upward develop- 
ment and the duties and privileges of citizenship. 

The teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, 
physiology, geometry, physics, agricultural chem- 
istry, and American history will give to the negro 
youth some adequate preparation for living a 
healthy life, for becoming self-sustaining, and for 
developing into a worthy citizen. 

(Q Colleges. — It is the God-given right of 
every human being to receive the fullest develop- 

1 Report of the Bureau of Education, 1896-97, p. 454. 



The Negro Problem 239 

ment his capacity warrants. The white man 
should remember, as Fichte expresses it: 

"The marrow of the idea of justice is that each 
man has an equal claim with every other man 
upon the full development of himself. ,,1 

History teaches the unwisdom of withholding 
from any portion of a people the advantages of a 
general culture lest it render some unfit for work 
or discontented with their lot. Spain and Ireland 
on the one hand, and Switzerland and Holland 
on the other, plainly illustrate that those countries 
which neglect the higher education of their people 
have little chance with those which cultivate it. 

The great mass of the American negro race are 
capable of receiving only rudimentary instruction ; 
but there are a few members of the race who need 
a higher or college education in order to grow as 
fully as nature ordained. 

A race develops intellectually only so far as is 
represented by its select members. If there are 
no members of a race more highly educated than 
the great mass of the people, no progress can be 
made, and when progress ceases, retrogression 
begins. Unless the advantages of a college edu- 
cation are brought to those who are capable of 
receiving it, the teachers will have so little valua- 
ble instruction to impart to their pupils that no 
generation will advance beyond its predecessor. 
College-trained teachers who possess the necessary 

1 Ethik, vol. i.,p. 19. 



240 Vital American Problems 

knowledge, culture, and technical skill, and, above 
all, the purity of character and the divine flame 
of enthusiasm which is capable of lighting the 
lamps of ambition within the soul, are the only 
levers which will raise the race generation by 
generation on to a higher plane of intellectual 
life. An eminent authority has said that 85 per 
cent, of the value of a school lies in the personality 
of the teacher, leaving only 15 per cent, for all 
other means and appliances. Unless examples 
of higher education and culture are given to 
stimulate emulation, what incentive will there 
be for mental improvement? Every thoughtful 
person knows that these incentives are necessary 
for the white race, and is the negro race superior 
to the white race ? 

The teacher's mission is one of the greatest 
importance ; the children he now trains will some 
day be the parents of a new generation, and the 
future destiny of the race depends largely on 
the way he fulfils his duties. Teachers should 
consider themselves, as Dr. Albion W. Small 
says, "not as leaders of children, but as makers 
of society.' ' 

The present grade of negro teachers, while 
showing a marked improvement over those of the 
past, are still far below the standard which the 
race requires in the instructors of their children. 
The fear, which has been expressed, that the 
race is threatened with an over-supply of college- 



The Negro Problem 241 

bred men and women, is one without any foun- 
dation. In 1903, Dr. Du Bois wrote: 

"There are to-day less than 3000 living negro 
college graduates in the United States, and less 
than 1000 negroes in college." 1 

The colored race, however, is not wanting in 
colleges and universities. The following are the 
leading institutions for the higher education of 
the negro, with the dates of their establishment: 

Lincoln University, Lincoln, Pa 1864 

Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio 1868 

Howard University, Washington, D. C 1868 

Leland University, New Orleans, La 1870 

Benedict College, Columbia, S. C 1870 

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn 187 1 

Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga 1872 

Biddle University, Charlotte, N. C 1872 

Southland College, Southland, Ark 1872 

Roger Williams University, Tenn 1873 

New Orleans University, New Orleans, La 1874 

Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C 1874 

Rust University, Holly Springs, Miss 1874 

Straight University, New Orleans, La 1874 

Branch College, Pine Bluff, Ark 1878 

Claflin University, Orangeburg, S. C 1878 

Knoxville College, Knoxville, Tenn 1879 

Clark University, South Atlanta, Ga 1879 

Wiley University, Marshall, Tex 1880 

Paine University, Augusta, Ga 1882 

Allen University, Columbia, S. C 1883 

1 The Negro Problem, p. 66. 
16 



242 Vital American Problems 

Talladega College, Talladega, Ala 1885 

Virginia Collegiate Institute, Petersburg, Va. . 1885 

Paul Quin College, Waco, Tex 1885 

Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Mo 1890 

Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Ga 1890 

Atlanta Baptist College, Atlanta, Ga 1893 

Georgia Industrial College, Atlanta, Ga 1894 

Delaware State College, Dover, Del 1894 

Philander Smith College, Little Rock, Ark. . . . 1894 

Higher education as furnished by the colleges, 
contrary to the fears of many educators, has not 
unfitted the negro for earning a living, nor has it 
sent into the world men who can find nothing 
to do suitable to their talents. 

Dr. F. G. Merrill, Dean of Fisk University, has 
prepared the following statistics of the present 
occupation of the 400 graduates of that institu- 
tion, in answer to the statement of Charles Dudley 
Warner that higher education is doing the negro 
more harm than good, and is increasing his law- 
lessness and idleness: 

College professors 8 

Principals of high and normal schools 12 

Principals of grammar schools 34 

Teachers 165 

Doctors 17 

Ministers 19 

U. S. government employees 9 

Lawyers 9 

Commercial pursuits 13 



The Negro Problem 243 

Students in professional schools 16 

Wives at home 44 

Living at home 13 

Unclassified 9 

Business and homes not registered at University . 3 2 

In the 1902 report of the social study of the 
eollege-bred negro, made by Atlanta University, 
the returns as to the occupations of college-bred 
negroes show that 13 12 out of 2000, the total 
number of graduates, reported as follows: 

Teachers 53.4 per cent. 

Clergymen 16.8 

Physicians, etc 6.3 

Students 5.6 

Lawyers 4.7 

In government service 4.0 

In business 3.6 

Farmers and artisans 2.7 

Editors, secretaries, and clerks 2.4 

Miscellaneous 5 

Granting that even a considerable proportion 
of the third not heard from are unsuccessful, this 
is a record of usefulness of which these colleges 
may well be proud. Much greater is the dan- 
ger arising from half-trained minds and shallow 
thinking than from over-education and over- 
refinement. 

President Eliot of Harvard not long ago uttered 
these pregnant words : 



244 Vital American Problems 

"If any expect that the negro teachers of the South 
can be adequately educated in the primary schools 
or grammar schools or industrial schools, pure and 
simple, I can only say in reply that that is more than 
we can do in the North for the white race. The only 
way to have good primary schools and grammar 
schools in Massachusetts is to have high schools and 
normal schools and colleges, in which the higher 
teachers are trained. It must be so throughout the 
South ; the negro race needs absolutely these higher 
facilities of education." 

"Not a social class nor a struggling race can reach 
equality with other classes and races until its leaders 
can meet theirs on equal terms," declares that keen 
student of human affairs Mr. John R. Commons. 
" It cannot depend on others, but must raise up 
leaders from its own ranks. This is the problem of 
higher education — not that scholastic education that 
ends in itself, but that broad education that equips 
for higher usefulness. If those individuals who are 
competent to become lawyers, physicians, teachers, 
preachers, organizers, guides, innovators, experi- 
menters, are prevented from getting the right edu- 
cation, then there is little hope for progress among 
the race as a whole, in the intelligence, manliness, 
and co-operation needed for self-government." 1 

(D) Manual Training. — In the early days of 
the Republic, when our system of public educa- 
tion was still in its infancy, mental and manual 
education were rather closely connected. The 

1 Races and Immigrants in America , p. 52. 



The Negro Problem 245 

crude state of the manufacturing and agricultural 
industries brought into existence the apprentice- 
ship system. Under this system the master bound 
himself to look after the mental and moral well- 
being of the apprentice besides teaching him the 
manual of his trade. By the youth's attendance 
for three or four months of each year, during his 
apprenticeship, upon the district school, the mental 
culture of the apprentice was not neglected. Alter- 
nating between school and shop, the mental and 
manual education of the apprentice went on hand 
in hand, each in an important sense guiding the 
other. 

As time passed, the school gradually improved 
by the adoption of a larger number of subjects 
and a more thorough method of instruction, and 
more time was demanded from the student. In 
the industrial world, labor-saving machines were 
being invented, subdivision of labor set in, and 
the efforts of the individual became concentrated 
upon a very narrow range of work. Competition 
and the development of trade into diverse and 
complex branches left time neither for the master 
to teach nor for the apprentice to learn. The 
school and the shop became divorced, as the 
master found it cheaper to employ skilled labor 
than to train ignorant youths. Thus the ap- 
prenticeship system for learning a trade gradu- 
ally passed away, never to return. 

To-day, the student who enters a shop at fifteen 



246 Vital American Problems 

for a three or four years' apprenticeship seldom 
returns to school. The student who at eighteen 
finishes a high-school course, and enters a shop as 
an apprentice, often finds that his twelve or 
fourteen years of mental school-work have unfitted 
him for manual labor, even if he had not been 
taught to despise work with the hands. 

Manufacturing, as conducted in the twentieth 
century in America, enables the man in the shop 
to learn only a small part of his trade, and that, 
usually, the mechanical part. Shop training, even 
where it is still possible, is too narrow to make a 
man versatile. If the one machine he learns to 
run becomes obsolete, he loses his position. He 
seldom has the opportunity to obtain instruction 
sufficient to enable him to adjust himself to 
changes brought about by the invention of new 
machines. As a result of the development of and 
transition in our manufacturing establishments, 
a corresponding change in the education of the 
industrial classes is demanded. The present 
educational need of a large majority of young men 
is for a return to the colonial system of the simul- 
taneous training of the brain and the hand. 

To-day, the need of manual training, as a part 
of a common-school education for every boy, is 
being duly recognized, and in many of the cities 
of the country manual-training departments have 
been added to the public-school systems. It 
is well known that Germany owes, in a very large 



The Negro Problem 247 

measure, its place in the industrial and commercial 
world to the universal system of trade schools 
throughout its dominions, which insures the 
label "made in Germany" to represent superior 
excellence in workmanship. 

Industrial education is the complement of 
general education. General education is limited 
to the study of principles and theory: industrial 
education concerns itself with practice and appli- 
cation. Neither is complete without the other. 
"Learn by doing" is a motto beginning to be 
written large over all educational movements. 

Former State-Superintendent Wickersham of 
Pennsylvania has strikingly said : 

"It is not enough to instruct a boy in the branches 
of learning usually taught in our common schools 
and there leave him. It must be seen by some author- 
ity that he is allowed a chance to prepare himself 
to earn a livelihood. It takes more than a mere 
knowledge of books to make a useful member of 
society and a good citizen. The present product 
of our schools seems to be, in too great a degree, 
clerks, book-keepers, salesmen, agents, office-seekers 
and office-holders. We must so modify our system 
of instruction as to send out instead large classes of 
young people fitted for trades, for business, and 
willing and able to work'' 

Dr. H. J. Hudson forcibly declares: "It is 
desirable that children should learn to think, but 
it is indispensable that they should learn to work." 



248 Vital American Problems 

The fundamental principle of industrial training 
has been keenly defined in these words: 

" We are told that knowledge is power; but know- 
ledge is not always power. There are men who are 
forever learning, yet never really know anything. . . . 
The intrinsic value of knowledge is always on the 
productive side. Change the adage so that it may 
read, * Applied Knowledge is power S and we have at 
once the key to our present civilization and progress. 
This is just what we hope may be accomplished by 
industrial education/ ' 

The time has come when the State itself should 
recognize the relation between a higher type of 
manual education and the interests of material 
prosperity, just as it makes provision for the culti- 
vation of the mental powers in order to develop 
the intellectual capacity of the community. 

Mr. Arthur MacArthur, in his valuable work 
on Education, sums up his study of the results 
of manual training abroad in these words: 

"It is a matter of general observation that manual 
training and ordinary teaching have been conducted in 
distinct parts of the same school for many years in 
Europe; and that generally the effect of this has 
served to enlarge the faculties, refine the taste, to give 
clearness and breadth to the intellect, to make the 
character more helpful and self-reliant, and to start 
the pupils with the best prospects of success in the 
practical ends of life." l 

■P. 252. 



The Negro Problem 249 

Proper manual training gives the youth a 
respect for honest, intelligent labor. A boy who 
sees nothing in manual labor but mere brute 
force, despises both the labor and the laborer. 
To him all handwork is drudgery. With the 
acquisition of skill in himself comes a pride in 
its possession, and the ability and willingness to 
recognize it in his fellows. When once he appre- 
ciates skill in handicraft or in any manual art, 
he regards the possession of it with sympathy and 
respect, and life becomes not drudgery, but a 
pleasure. 

With school and shop training combined, there 
will be no necessity for the teaching that labor 
is honorable in just the degree that it is intelligent. 
This view, this knowledge, will have become a 
part of the student's nature and a large element of 
his self-respect. No boy who has with his own 
hands used the tools of the machine shop, the 
carpenter shop, or the smithing shop, and who 
has learned by the sweat of his brow what it is 
to earn directive intelligence, can fail to recognize 
in every honest toiler a brother-man. 

Industrial training in the schools would do 
more than any other force operative to-day to 
close the widening breach between capital and 
labor by the appreciation of the individual path 
each necessarily takes in the co-ordinate work 
of the two classes; to silence the professional 
political agitator who is constantly shouting that 



250 Vital American Problems 

the mental activities on the part of the non-pro- 
ducing employer are being used to absorb all the 
profits and to crush labor, by a practical knowledge 
of the falsity of his teachings ; to do away with the 
erroneous notion that it is preferable to associate 
with any quack of a doctor or any shyster of a 
lawyer than it is to fraternize with him whose 
hands are callous through honest physical labor; 
to teach the universal brotherhood of man. 

The object of the manual- training school is well 
set forth by Dr. Belfield in his inaugural address 
delivered before the Chicago Manual -Training 
School Association: 

"The distinctive feature of the manual-training 
school is the education of the mind, and of the hand 
as the agent of the mind. The time of the pupil in 
school is about equally divided between the study of 
books and the study of things; between the academic 
work on the one hand, and the drawing and shop work 
on the other. Observe, I do not say between school 
work and shop work, for the shop is as much a 
school as is any other part of the establishment. Nor 
do I mean that the shop gives an education of the 
hand alone, and the class-room an education of the 
brain; but I mean that the shop educates hand and 
brain. That the hand is educated I need not stop to 
prove ; but the shop educates the mind also. . . . The 
fact should never be lost sight of for an instant that 
the product of the public school should be, not the 
polished articles of furniture, not the perfect piece 
of machinery, but the polished, perfect boy. The 






The Negro Problem 251 

acquisition of industrial skill should be the means 
of promoting the general education of the pupil, the 
education of the hand should be the means of more 
completely and more efficaciously educating the 
brain." 

The universal demand is that the school shall 
put its graduates more directly in relation to the 
actual needs of our civilization. 

Manual training means using the hands, as 
intellectual training means using the mind. And 
the time to begin the teaching of manual training 
is when the child first enters school. Froebel re- 
cognized this when he founded the kindergarten, 
which is largely juvenile manual training. 

What is a most vital consideration, and one 
which is often overlooked, is the fact that the 
development of the motor centres of the brain 
depends in a large degree on the exercises of the 
young, and that the development period of the 
hand centres occupies but about ten years. Dr. 
James Crichton-Browne, the eminent English sci- 
entist, whose views have received the assent of 
many of the foremost students of the training of 
the hand, declares : 

" There can be no doubt that its most active period 
[of development] is from the fourth to the fourteenth 
year, after which these centres become comparatively 
fixed and stubborn. Hence, it can be understood 
that boys and girls whose hands have been left 
altogether untrained up to the fifteenth year are 



i$2 Vital American Problems 

comparatively incapable of high manual efficiency 
ever afterward." 

Our people are now realising that H is ai 
BentiaJ for a boy bo learn how to drive a nail 
straight, how to Insert ;i screw neatly, how to fit 
two edges of a plani together, how to mal 
square box, as It is for him to know that two 
and two make four, 

Our people are n<> longer content to send their 
children t<> a school winch teaches nothing i>u(. 
knowledge oi words and of unrelated facts, They 
ask that their children Bhall be trained for the 
(luf ies of private and public life. 

The mastership of materials, tools, and Industrial 
proo • educative In a high degree and Is far 

more Invigorating to the mind than the ma 
of details and circumstances that surround some 
of the literary Btudies to-day taught In our public 

seho< >ls. 

Carlyle sunk; up the whole subject In these 
few pregnant words: "Man without tools is 
nothing: with tools, he Is all." 

The present educational training furnished in 
our public schools is, in most, e.ises, entirely inade- 
quate to prepare the child for the duties of hits 
[t divorces head and hand, knowledge and practi- 
cal skill, and (cuds to perpetuate the idea that- 

professional hie or teaching is more respectable 
and more worthy of pursuit than labor with the 
hands, Tin:. Is the lesuit of providing instruction 



The Negro Problem 253 

primarily suited for B professional career or that 
of a teacher. 

American ideas oi educal ion have largely agreed 
with those of the Chinese, who believe that a 
sharpening of the intellect by book training is the 
sole requirement for the development of man. 

To many young men and women, exclusive 

hook knowledge is of little real benefit, for it leaves 
them, at the most critical period of their exist- 
ence, Stranded, without preparation or qualifies 
tions to enter any employment by which they 

could earn a living. 

Experience has demonstrated that to half ed 
UCate a man is to leave him unbalanced. Indus- 
trial education is the counterpart of intellectual 
training, and until the instructions in these two 

Subjects jjo hand in hand, the pupils in our schools 

will not receive the equitable, harmonious adjust 

nienl, of their faculties which will enable them to 
do their best work in the world. 

Training that omits preparation for the practi- 
cal duties of life is worse than defective it is abso 
lutely false. Proebel has said, "Man only knows 
thoroughly that which he is able to produce," 

and thoroughness in education is the jjreat need 
in America to-day. 

The Massachusel ts Commission on industrial 
and Technical Education, in their report issued in 
April, 1906, made the following recommendations, 
which deserve the most careful consideration, 



254 Vital American Problems 

based as they were on extensive investigation 
by an able, honest, and patriotic body: 

"There seem to be two lines in which industrial 
education may be developed — through the exist- 
ing public-school system, and through independent 
industrial schools. In regard to the former, the 
Commission recommends that cities and towns so 
modify the work in the elementary schools as to 
include for boys and girls instruction and practice 
in the elements of productive industry, including 
agriculture and the mechanic and domestic arts, and 
that this instruction be of such a character as to 
secure from it the highest culture as well as the 
highest industrial value; and that the work in the 
high schools be modified so that instruction in 
mathematics, the sciences, and drawing shall show the 
application and use of these subjects in industrial 
life, with especial reference to local industries, so that 
the students may see that these subjects are not 
designed primarily and solely for academic purposes, 
but that they may be utilized for the purposes of 
practical life. That is, algebra and geometry should 
be so taught in the public schools as to show their 
relations to construction ; botany to horticulture and 
agriculture; chemistry to agriculture, manufactures, 
and domestic science; and drawing to every form 
of industry.' * 

With comparatively few exceptions, the Ameri- 
can negro race now are, and in the future must 
remain, tillers of the soil, carpenters, masons, and 
bricklayers. Eighty-eight per cent, of the colored 



The Negro Problem 255 

people — men, women and children — are farmers. 
The land in the South, despite long abuse, is still 
fertile; yet, on two thirds of the land there is 
raised but one crop a year. The greatest need of 
the colored people is manual training, — a know- 
ledge of how to work intelligently and successfully. 

" Prior to the war," writes Ex-Governor Lowry of 
Mississippi, " there were a large number of negro me- 
chanics in the Southern States; many of them were 
expert blacksmiths, wheelwrights, wagon-makers, 
brick-masons, carpenters, plasterers, painters, and 
shoe-makers." 1 

In 1863, when the negro was set free, xie held 
practically without a rival the entire field of indus- 
trial labor throughout the South. Ninety-five 
per cent, of all the industrial work of the Southern 
States was in his hands, and he was fully com- 
petent to do it. Nearly every adult was either 
a skilled laborer or a trained mechanic. 

When the old slaves who had been trained as 
farmhands, mechanics, cooks, and house servants 
died, their accomplishments departed with them. 
They had looked upon their skill as a reminder 
of their slave life, and when freedom came they 
considered it as of no value to others. Their 
children, therefore, learned none of the accom- 
plishments of their parents, but they went out 

1 156 North American Review, p. 472. 



256 Vital American Problems 

into the world to obtain education of the kind 
their parents as slaves never received. 

The newly freed slaves desired above every- 
thing to dress their children like white children, 
to send their children to school to learn the sub- 
jects taught to white children, and to keep them 
from working, like white children. As their white 
masters did not work, they considered it a badge 
of slavery to have their children work. They 
endeavored to make gentlemen of their sons, and 
a gentleman to their notion was a man who dressed 
in a certain way, was educated in certain subjects, 
and who lived a life of ease. So the old slaves 
struggled and worked that their children might 
be able to live like the sons of their former masters, 
and the children received false ideas which have 
never been entirely eradicated. 

Thus, for nearly twenty years after the war, the 
industrial training as given to the negroes by their 
former masters was almost entirely overlooked. 
The knowledge imparted to the negro had no 
bearing on his personal well-being or on what was 
needful for his self-maintenance, but was of the 
character of pure ornamentation, which was the 
prevailing style of education taught in the schools 
throughout the land. 

Colored men and women were educated in 
literature, mathematics, and the sciences, and no 
thought was given to the two centuries of slave 
life on the plantation, and to the actual everyday 



The Negro Problem 257 

necessities of the negroes' life; Greek and Latin 
were substituted for carpentry and mechanics, 
and the classics were taught in the place of agri- 
culture. As the teaching of books had been de- 
nied to the negro during slavery, it was assumed 
that the education he most needed was book 
learning, and an effort was made in schools and 
colleges to insert into his mind, as by a surgical 
operation, the culture the white race had gained 
during the centuries of development. 

After several years of experimentation the 
people of this country began to discern that they 
were living in a practical age, and that labor was 
being directed by knowledge, and that it must 
continue to be so directed still more in the future, 
and their practical minds were turned to the 
consideration of the kind of instruction that ought 
to be given by the schools. 

To-day, Hampton Normal and Agricultural 
Institute, the pioneer organization in this work, 
Tuskegee Institute, under the management of that 
prince of the colored race Mr. Booker T. Wash- 
ington, and some ninety-eight kindred schools, 
are giving to the negro industrial education, and 
are gradually changing the ideas of the race with 
regard to labor with the hands. At these schools, 
not only is intellectual training provided, but 
great stress is laid upon the teaching of manual 
labor in order that the colored artisans may 
develop into business men and property-owners. 
17 



258 Vital American Problems 

Earnest efforts are being made to find out the 
kind of skilled labor in which the negro is most * 
likely to find employment and for which he is 
best fitted, and intelligent instruction is being 
given so that no one particular branch of labor 
may fall to the lot of the white man. The pupil 
is taught the whole of a particular trade in all its 
branches and the principles underlying it. Work 
is so divided that the student spends one half of his 
time in academic studies and one half in the indus- 
trial departments. Beginning by emphasizing the 
dignity of labor and the disgrace of idleness, the 
instructors in these schools are causing a part of 
the colored race to understand and to appreciate 
the value of industrial education; and, realizing 
its value, the negro parents are beginning to 
demand that their children be taught to work 
intelligently. So insistent has become this demand 
that there are few schools in the Southland where 
some attempts are not made in this direction. 

These schools recognize and appreciate the 
fact that the negro youth has a life of work before 
him and that from the beginning of his education 
all efforts should be directed to teach him how to 
work intelligently and effectively, so that he may 
take his place in the world without any difficulty 
of adjustment. They are endeavoring to carry out 
Ruskin's idea, that "education is leading human 
souls to what is best and making what is best out 
of them." 



The Negro Problem 259 

Industrial education, coupled with intellectual 
training, would instill this important fact into 
the minds of the pupils — that there is nothing 
degrading in hand labor, but, on the contrary, 
labor in any form is noble and dignified, and that 
it is as honorable to earn one's living by the use of 
the spade, the saw, or the machine, as by the use 
of the pen. 

"I feel safe in saying, from the basis of personal 
experience with the negroes," declares Professor N. S. 
Shaler, "that somewhere near one third of them are 
fit to be trained for mechanical employment of a 
fairly high grade." x 

The academic discussion of the value of indus- 
trial training, so far as the negro is concerned, as 
well as of the colored man's capacity to receive 
this education, is now passing into history. Mr. 
Washington has said with reference to Tuskegee 
Institute: J 

"We have sent into the world since 1888 quite 
six thousand men and women who are doing good, 
strong, effective work for their fellows and their 
country. I think I am quite safe in saying that, after 
a careful inquiry, not more than ten per cent, of 
those receiving our diplomas or certificates can be 
found in idleness during any season of the year." 

1 'The records of the South show that 90 per 

1 57 Popular Science Monthly, p. 149. 



260 Vital American Problems 

cent, of the colored persons in prison are with- 
out knowledge of trades, and 61 per cent, are 
illiterate." « 

A negro will be a better neighbor if he has 
learned to be an intelligent farmer, carpenter, or 
mechanic, and to be industrious, thrifty, and 
economical, than if he merely scratches the sur- 
face of the ground with a hoe and lives in a one- 
room cabin and borrows, at a ruinous rate of 
interest, from the neighboring storekeeper, the 
money on which to live. " Every white man," to 
again quote Mr. Washington, "will respect the 
negro who owns a two-story brick business block in 
the centre of town and has $5000 in the bank. 
When a black man is the largest taxpayer and owns 
and cultivates the most successful farm in his 
county, his white neighbors will not object very 
long to his voting, and to having his vote honestly 
counted. The black man who is the largest con- 
tractor in his town and lives in a two-story brick 
house is not very liable to be lynched.' ' 

The addition of manual training to the general 
work of the school does not mean that it would 
be necessary to erect huge workshops filled with 
the finest and most expensive machinery, or that 
the instructors should be the greatest mechanical 
artists of the age. On the contrary, the instruction 
the average negro most needs is how to fertilize, 
to sow, and to reap according to the best standard, 

1 Journal 0} Nat. Ed. Assn., 1904, p. 132. 



The Negro Problem 261 

which instruction may be imparted by teachers 
trained in specialized schools and with the aid of a 
few acres of ground surrounding the school-house. 
The workshop need only be equipped for teaching 
the trades of carpentering, bricklaying, black- 
smithing, and the art of the wheelwright ; and the 
teachers require but a practical knowledge of these 
trades. 

It must not, however, be the aim of the educa- 
tors to make the trade school a remunerative insti- 
tution. Attempts have been made to place trade 
schools on a commercially paying basis ; and the 
result in every such case has been that the educa- 
tion of the pupil has been sacrificed to the pro- 
duction of salable articles, and in the end the 
school became bankrupt. The education of the 
boy should be the sole aim of the school, and 
the matter of increasing the funds of the school by 
the sale of the product should have but a minor 
and secondary place. 

"I am entirely convinced/' said Dr. Haywood, the 
first general agent of the Slater fund, "that we 
cannot make industrial training self-sustaining, with- 
out sinking, to a hurtful degree, the educative part 
of the work in the effort to secure ' profits.' With 
this view I believe all experienced teachers will 
agree." 1 

Industrial education for the American negro is 

1 The Negro Artisan, 1902, p. 59. 



262 Vital American Problems 

not a panacea for all evils, social, domestic, or 
personal ; it is not the summum bonum of educa- 
tion; but it is a valuable educational feature and 
one which is absolutely indispensable for the full 
development of the negro. 

There have recently been placed fresh obstacles 
in the path of the Southern negro working man. 
In the North, by comparison with the large num- 
ber of white union and non-union men, he is in 
so small a minority as to be an unimportant indus- 
trial factor, yet he is being crowded into an ever 
narrowing circle of employments. The Commis- 
sioner of Immigration has sent his agents into 
Scotland, Holland, Germany, and Italy to induce 
emigration to the Southern States ; and there is a 
far-reaching movement for the diversion, from 
the Northern to Southern points, of a part of the 
great flood of immigration. With the constantly 
increasing immigration of the white man to the 
Southland, and the extension of unionism, with its 
somewhat unfriendly attitude toward the negro, 
the members of this race are facing the peril of 
having their industrial opportunities gradually 
taken from them. 

From the report of a social study of the negro 
artisan made in 1902 under the direction of the 
Atlanta University, the following list, showing 
the attitude of national and international organi- 
zations of the several trades toward the negro 
is taken: 



The Negro Problem 263 

Miners — Welcome negroes in nearly all cases. 
Longshoremen — Welcome negroes in nearly all cases. 
Cigarmakers — Admit practically all applicants. 
Barbers — Admit many, but restrain negroes when 

possible. 
Seamen — Admit many, but prefer whites. 
Firemen — Admit many, but prefer whites. 
Tobacco workers — Admit many, but prefer whites. 
Carriage and wagon workers — Admit some, but do 

not seek negroes. 
Brickmakers — Admit some, but do not seek negroes. 
Coopers — Admit some, but do not seek negroes. 
Broommakers — Admit some, but do not seek negroes. 
Plasterers — Admit freely in the South and a few in the 

North. 
Carpenters — Admit many in the South, almost none 

in the North. 
Masons — Admit many in the South, almost none in 

the North. 
Painters — Admit a few in the South, almost none in 

the North. 

The present constitution of the Knights of 
Labor admits members "at the option of each 
local assembly.' ' 

The following unions require a majority vote 
for admission to the locals : 

Boot and Shoe Workers Amalgamated Engineers 

Amalgamated Carpenters Metal Polishers 

Bottle Blowers Stove Mounters 

Glass Workers Bakers 

Wood Workers Barbers 



264 Vital American Problems 

Coopers Steam Engineers 

Stogiemakers Coal-Hoisting Engineers 

The wood workers, coal-hoisting engineers, 
and coopers require an examining committee in 
addition. 

The following require a two-thirds vote for 
admission to the locals: 

Brotherhood of Car- Sheet-Metal Workers 

penters Patternmakers 

Painters Tin-Plate Workers 

Tile Layers Broommakers 

Flint-Glass Workers. Iron and Steel Workers 

Nearly all these require also the favorable 
report of an examining committee. Among the 
iron and steel workers two black balls can make 
a second election necessary. 

The following unions require more than a two- 
thirds vote for admission : 

Electrical Workers, two-thirds vote, plus one, and 
examination. 

Moulders, two-thirds vote, plus one. 

Coremakers, two thirds vote, plus one. 

Boilermakers, three black balls reject. 

Blacksmiths, three black balls reject, two require 
second election. 

Street Railway Employees, three-fourths vote. 

Leather Workers (horse goods), three black balls re- 
ject. 

The following unions openly bar the entrance 
of the negro to their membership: the engineers, 



The Negro Problem 265 

firemen, telegraphers, carmen, switchmen, train- 
men, trackmen, and conductors; the stone-cutters, 
machinists, electrical workers, boilermakers, and 
wire-weavers. 

If the American negro is to compete with the 
white working man, his only hope of success is in 
being able to do his work a little better than his 
white competitor. Handicapped as he is by his 
color, his only way of overcoming this misfortune 
is to make of himself a better workman than 
his white neighbor, that his racial peculiarities 
will be overlooked in the work he is able to do. 

"The old struggle of the survival of the fittest is 
beginning in dead earnest/' recently declared Senator 
Benjamin R. Tillman, " and it is not saying too much 
to predict that the negro must do better or ' move on/ " 

To enable the negro to become a skilled work- 
man manual and industrial training are indispen- 
sable. To provide schools where he can obtain 
the training necessary to preserve his present in- 
dustrial position and to enable him to advance in 
his chosen work, is one of the most vital steps re- 
quired to be taken in order that his development 
may not be retarded and his position as a worker 
be not taken from him. 

It must not be overlooked in considering the 
economic future of the American negro that every 
individual, whatever his color, his race, or his creed, 
makes better the community in which he lives in 



266 Vital American Problems 

just the proportion that he develops the industrial 
ability to produce and acquire wealth and become 
a consumer in the community. 

(E) Manual Training for Girls. — In this 
twentieth century in America the mission of 
woman is twofold: she is a home-maker and a 
wage-earner. Her time may be devoted exclu- 
sively to the home, or it may be employed in 
earning a living, or the two vocations may simul- 
taneously devolve upon her. Few, if any, women 
in this country escape the responsibilities of home- 
making or of wage-earning. 

As a home-maker, woman performs the most 
important function in life. All civic relations 
begin in the family, and character gets its direc- 
tion and much of its development in the home. 
1 ' While the home is generally recognized as the 
chief seat of happiness, its immeasurable impor- 
tance as the very cornerstone of civilized life, is 
seldom thought of," says Mrs. Henry Holt. 1 
On the life in the home depends not only the 
character and worthiness of the present genera- 
tion, but the springs of the life of future gen- 
erations find their source in the purity or 
impurity of the homes of to-day. 

As the home life is the most important factor 

in society-building, the mission of woman as 

home-maker is the noblest mission in the world. 

"To the woman," said Henrik Ibsen in the course 

» On the Civic Relations, p. 2. 



The Negro Problem 267 

of an address before a Norwegian society known 
as the Woman's League, "we must look for the 
solution of the problem of humanity/ ' 

Upon the character, wisdom, industry, and 
economy of the wife and mother largely depend 
the health, the character, and the happiness of the 
members of the family. Practically the entire 
economic management of the household devolves 
upon her. On the mother's knowledge or lack of 
knowledge of household economies, the selection 
and preparation of foods, the laws of health, of 
books, and of religion, depends the difference 
between economy and wastefulness, comfort and 
discomfort, health and disease, cleanliness and 
squalor, prosperity and poverty, culture and ig- 
norance, morality and immorality in the house- 
hold. In the great majority of our American 
homes, the burden of the earliest moral and 
religious training of the children and the teaching 
of the first steps in learning rests almost exclu- 
sively upon the mother of the family. 

It is in the cradle and in the nursery that the 
child becomes the father of the man. All other 
influences combined are less potent, less com- 
prehensive, than the influence of the mother who 
creates the very atmosphere in which the infant 
mind develops and in which the child grows until 
his plastic character has been formed. No truer 
words have ever been uttered than the old saying 
that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. 



268 Vital American Problems 
i 

Since the education of man begins while he 
lies helpless in his mother's arms, and since the 
first steps in the child's education are the most 
important, as they give direction to his after life, 
the proper education of the mother as teacher is 
the most vital problem of education. 

Most women possess no knowledge save the 
ancient customs which have filtered down from 
generation to generation, and no experience save 
that gained by experimenting and practising on 
one's own helpless family, and this during the 
time when her growing children need the wise care 
which she alone is able to give them. And each 
daughter begins her life as home-maker almost 
as ignorant as was her mother before her. 

1 ' How can a child be properly educated by one 
who has not been properly educated himself!" was 
the despairing exclamation of Rousseau. The 
first business of the home is the care of the body. 
The average child, to-day, is not properly fed 
and the lack of nutritious food is working havoc 
with the lives of many Americans. 

The mothers of to-day are cooking to gratify 
the palate instead of faithfully studying and 
complying with the needs of the stomach; and, as 
husbands and children are apt to demand the 
foods which they like rather than those which 
are nutritious, and as the mothers are ignorant of 
the laws of physiology, hygiene, and nutritive val- 
ues and desire primarily to furnish food which is 



The Negro Problem 269 

most pleasing, the consequence must necessarily 
be unhealthy constitutions. 

Mrs. Ellen H. Richards tells us that "the prosper- 
ity of a nation depends upon the health and morals of 
its citizens; and the health and morals of a people 
depend mainly upon the food they eat, and the homes 
they live in. Strong men and women cannot be raised 
on insufficient food; good-tempered, temperate, highly 
moral men cannot be expected from a race which eats 
badly cooked food, irritating to the digestive organs 
and unsatisfying to the appetite. Wholesome and 
palatable food is the first step in good morals, and 
is conducive to ability in business, skill in trade, 
and healthy tone in literature." * 

Too long has the world been fed on foods pre- 
pared by instinct, affection, and duty ; and the time 
has now come for the system of selecting and cook- 
ing foods to be based on knowledge, intelligence, 
and practice. Cooking is an art, a science, a handi- 
craft, a business, and is in no sense intuitional. 

"One of the ways in which the worst economy is 
practised is in the buying of high-priced foods/ ' 
writes W. C. Atwater, Ph.D. " For this error, preju- 
dice, the palate, and poor cooking are mainly respon- 
sible. There is a prevalent but unfounded idea that 
costly foods, such as the tenderest meats, the finest 
fish, the highest-priced butter, the choicest flour, and 
the most delicate vegetables possess some peculiar 
virtue which is lacking in less expensive materials. 

1 Vol. vi., Library of Home Economics, p. 4. 



270 Vital American Problems 

Many people who have small incomes, and really 
wish to economize, think it beneath them to use the 
cheaper meats and inexpensive, but substantial, gro- 
ceries. Many, too, labor under the false impression 
that the costly food materials are somehow essential 
and economical. The maxim that 'the best is the 
cheapest ' does not apply to food. The 'best' food, 
in the sense of that which is the finest in appearance 
and flavor and is sold at the highest price, is rarely 
the most economical for people in good health. The 
food that is best fitted to the real wants of the user 
may be of the very kind which supplies the most 
nutriment at the lowest cost." 1 

Nothing tends more to make a home happy 
than does well-cooked, palatable food; nothing 
tends more to brighten the lives of a family than 
cleanliness and order. 

Wise temperance workers know that many 
men drink because they are not properly fed ; and 
that many women consume tea and coffee or 
adopt the drug habit to make up in stimulants for 
the lack of nutrition in foods about which they 
have no knowledge. 

The young man or woman who has had good 
home influence shows that advantage all through 
life. The knowledge a child consciously or uncon- 
sciously gains in the early years remains indelible, 
ineradicable. Many an eminent man has admitted 

1 "Food and Diet," Yearbook of the Department of Agri- 
culture, 1894. 



The Negro Problem 271 

like John Quincy Adams, "All that I am my 
mother made me," and like Abraham Lincoln, 
"All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel 
mother/ ' Very true is the old Spanish proverb 
"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy/ ' 
Miss Catherine Beecher, in writing of "the 
deplorable sufferings of multitudes of young 
wives and mothers, from the combined influence 
of poor health, poor domestics, and a defective 
domestic education/' says: 

"The measure which, more than any other, would 
tend to remedy this evil, would be to place domestic 
economy on an equality with the other sciences in 
female schools. This should be done because it can 
be properly and systematically taught (not practi- 
cally, but as a science) , as much so as political econ- 
omy or moral science, or any other branch of study; 
because it embraces knowledge which will be needed 
by young women at all times and in all places ; because 
this science can never be properly taught until it has 
been made a branch of study ; and because this method 
will secure a dignity and importance in the estimation 
of young girls, which can never be accorded while 
they perceive their teachers and parents practically 
attaching more value to every other department of 
science than this." 

"Few parents," declares Dr. Alfred T. Schofield— 
and his words deserve most careful attention, " have 
any idea of the immense value of intelligent physical, 

1 Preface to A Treatise on Domestic Economy. 



272 Vital American Problems 

mental and moral training, on the character of which 
it is not too much to say the future of the child mainly 
depends. The force of training is far greater than that 
of heredity." 1 

A false standard of social life has until recent 
years prevented woman from engaging in any 
useful labor, and has unfitted her for teaching 
her children practical knowledge even in a small 
degree. 

Prior to 1870, industrial training for women 
was practically unknown. In that year, however, 
experiments of various kinds were attempted in 
the systems of education. Drawing was made 
an integral part of the work of the Boston public 
schools; the Michigan and Illinois Industrial 
Universities were opened to women, and sewing 
was introduced into some of the schools of the 
Eastern States. Since that time technical schools, 
land grant colleges, cooking schools, industrial 
classes, and art schools have been established and 
departments of House Economies are being organ- 
ized in many of the best educational institutions. 

The Secretary of Agriculture in his report of 
June 30, 1907, says: 

" Among the educational movements which in 
recent years have engaged the attention of the public 
none has been received with greater favor than the 
attempt to introduce into schools for girls and wo- 

1 The Home Life in Order, p. 223. 



The Negro Problem 273 

men some systematic teaching of the arts which are 
practised in the home. Many of the colleges of ag- 
riculture and mechanic arts, together with scientific, 
technical, and industrial schools, now maintain a 
department of domestic science. Cooking and sewing 
are quite commonly taught in the public schools, and 
cooking schools for women have been organized in 
numerous places. While useful instruction in these 
lines is imparted, it is generally recognized that 
much remains to be done before the teaching of do- 
mestic science can assume its most effective form." 1 

The preparation for wage-earning in no way 
incapacitates a woman for the performance of 
the duties in the home; it does not lessen the 
grace or refinement of her nature; but on the 
contrary, such preparation is of almost incalcu- 
lable value to her as a home-maker and a teacher 
of her children. 

Manual training for negro girls is as essential as 
it is for negro boys. It is not only of supreme 
importance to the individual, but it is vitally 
necessary to the upward development of the race. 

The practical instruction in domestic economy 
which was given to colored girls in all Southern 
homes prior to the Civil War has now ceased. 
No more are negro children brought up in and 
about the homes of the white. The young negro 
girls have no association with white women, 
such as their mothers enjoyed when they formed 

1 Yearbook, Department of Agriculture, June 30, 1907. 
18 



274 Vital American Problems 

a part of every Southern household. To-day 
they are barred from white companionship and 
from the refining influence of the home life of 
white people. 

Like their brothers, the negro girls mistook 
the significance of emancipation and looked 
upon freedom as meaning cessation from work. 
They at once gave up the loom and the distaff, 
turned from the kitchen and the dairy, and 
endeavored to copy the lives of their former 
white mistresses by doing no work. This idea of 
idleness was fostered by the old " mammies' ' who 
wished their daughters to live like " white ladies," 
and has not disappeared during these forty 
years of freedom. 

Negro girls, in larger numbers than boys, 
have attended the public schools, but have 
learned little besides literary subjects — the orna- 
ments of the mind. They have studied the 
dead languages and have failed to learn the 
simplest rules in domestic science. 

"How long," said Mr. Washington, " has my heart 
been made to sink as I have gone through the South 
and into the homes of the people, and have found 
women who could converse intelligently on Grecian 
history, who had studied geometry, who could 
analyze the most complex sentences, and yet could not 
analyze the poorly cooked and still more poorly 
served cornbread and fat meat which they and their 
families were eating three times a day. It is little 



The Negro Problem 275 

trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert 
of Sahara on an artificial globe, but seldom can you 
find one who can locate on an actual dinner-table 
the proper place for the carving knife and fork or the 
meat and vegetables." 1 

The condition of home life among the Southern 
negroes is deplorable. A majority of their homes 
consist of a one-room cabin in which are indiscrim- 
inately huddled the old and young of the family 
and occasionally a non-relative. Their food con- 
sists of but two or three varieties, and cooking 
means little more than a thorough warming. 
The noonday sun seldom finds the floors swept, 
the dishes washed, and the cabin put in order. 
Sanitary laws are unknown and sickness abounds. 
Dirt, slovenliness, and non-nutritious food breed 
illnesses which might be prevented by a little 
knowledge of domestic economy and the spread 
of which could be checked by cleanliness and 
wholesome food. 

The children are brought up amid uncleanly 
and unsanitary conditions and without the moral 
training so essential to their healthful and proper 
development. 

The modern negro woman has had no object 
lesson in morality or modesty from association 
with white women, and there has grown up a 
barrier between the women of the white and 

1 Tuskegee, by Max B. Thrasher, p. 97. 



276 Vital American Problems 

negro races which has had the appalling effect 
of causing the negro woman to sink backward 
into lower stages of life. She needs help, help 
from her own people, as she will look in no other 
direction for examples or for inspiration. 

From the time of leaving school, most negro 
girls are compelled to earn a living for themselves, 
and marriage to them means but a transfer of 
the place of work — from the home or shop of her 
employer to the home of her husband. 

Above all other assistance, the negro girl needs 
education in those subjects which will enable her 
to take her place in the world as wage-earner and 
as home-maker. To-day, in many of the indus- 
trial schools of the South, instruction is given 
with these ends in view. At Tuskegee, about 
one third of the students are young women. In 
all the subjects in the academic department of this 
Institute, and in the industrial department, the 
following subjects, to wit: type-setting, tailoring, 
caring for the sick, market-gardening, poultry- 
raising, bee-keeping, horticulture and floriculture, 
are taught to both men and women; while mat- 
tressmaking, plain sewing, dressmaking, millinery, 
cooking, laundry work, and general housekeeping 
are taught to young women only. 

Instruction in these subjects is absolutely es- 
sential for the negro girl who is obliged to earn 
her own living and whose mission in life is to 
make a home from which a higher standard of 



The Negro Problem 277 

civilization will issue. With hygiene and domestic 
science substituted for literature and the dead 
languages, the young negro girl will have the desire, 
the knowledge, and the will, upon leaving school, 
and taking up the duties of wife and mother, to 
change the customary life of her home by insist- 
ing upon living in a cabin with more than one 
room, by having cleanly and healthful surround- 
ings, by selecting and preparing nutritious foods, 
and by her skill at domestic science, of creating an 
atmosphere in which the family will grow into 
healthier, nobler, happier, and better men and 
women. 

(F) Religious Influence. — Religion — man's 
instinctive belief in a being or power conceived by 
him to be greater or holier than himself, to whom 
he owes allegiance, and his recognition of certain 
obligations arising out of such allegiance, which 
prompts him to acts of reverence, devotion, or 
obedience — is as natural to man as is hunger and 
thirst. It has not been imposed upon him by 
priests, medicine-men, or hierarchies, nor is it an 
abnormal growth foreign to his nature. Religion 
is one of the primary instincts, and is inseparable 
from the genesis and evolution of the normal 
nature of man, and has existed under all circum- 
stances and conditions, in all ages and beneath 
all skies. 

"On one main point which has been questioned 



278 Vital American Problems 

respecting existing facts," declares that accurate 
student of religion and science, the Duke of Argyll, 
"the progress of inquiry seems to have established 
beyond any reasonable doubt that no race of men 
now exists so savage and degraded as to be, or to 
have been when discovered, wholly destitute of any 
conceptions of a religious nature. It is now well 
understood that all the cases in which the existence of 
such savages has been reported are cases which break 
down upon more intimate knowledge and more sci- 
entific inquiry." 1 

Such is the conclusion arrived at by the careful 
modern inquirer Professor Tiele, who says : 

"The statement that there are nations or tribes 
which possess no religion, rests either on inaccurate 
observations or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe or 
nation has yet been met with destitute of belief in 
any higher beings, and travellers who asserted their 
existence have been afterwards refuted by facts. It 
is legitimate, therefore, to call religion, in its most 
general sense, an universal phenomenon of hu- 
manity." 2 

This fact was recognized by that ancient his- 
torian Plutarch who wrote these striking words : 

"If you will take the trouble to travel through the 
world you will find towns and cities without walls, 
without letters, without kings, without houses, with- 
out wealth, without money, without theatres, and 



1 The Unity of Nature, pp. 477, 478. 

2 History of Religion, p. 6. 



The Negro Problem 279 

places of exercise, but there was never seen by any 
man any city without temple or gods." 

Religion has ever been and will never cease to 
be an indispensable and permanent condition of 
the life of a rational man. "Man is incurably 
religious/' wisely declared Sabatier. Individual 
experience through the centuries has illustrated 
the great truth embodied in the words of Saint 
Augustine, "Thou has made us for Thyself, and 
our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee." 

Goethe, in speaking of the religious instinct in 
man, said that it is "the deepest, nay, the one 
theme of the world's history to which all others 
are subordinate." 

Therefore, it is safe to agree with Herbert 
Spencer that "religion, everywhere present as a 
weft running through the warp of human society, 
expresses some eternal fact" 1 ; and with Count 
Tolstoi, who has declared: 

"No society of men since men have been ra- 
tional beings could ever live, and therefore never 
did live and cannot live, without religion." 2 

Religion lies at the root of society and has 
ever been the strongest factor in society-building. 
The efforts of primitive man to change the exist- 
ing order may, in nearly all instances, be traced 
to his religious belief. The well-established 

1 First Principles, p. 20, chap, i., " Religion and Science." 

2 What is Religion f p. 8. 



280 Vital American Problems 

customs of primitive society were all founded on 
religion. Marriage owes its existence to religion; 
home, its sanctity ; while in upholding the central 
authority of the head of the family, social order 
was evolved. 

Religion was the fountain-head of the ancient 
arts. Literature was invented by and developed 
through the attempts of the primitive races to 
preserve the prayers and songs addressed to their 
gods; sculpture had its birth in their efforts 
to make visible the forms of their deities; archi- 
tecture resulted from their desire to symbolize 
their faith in permanent form and to house and 
glorify their sculptured gods; and the dance was 
the formal outcome of their methods of express- 
ing religious ecstasies. 

Religion gave to man an ideal ; it pointed out 
to him something toward which he might direct 
his energies, a goal which, by striving for, he 
might possibly reach. By clothing his god with 
human attributes, man, in the earliest stages of 
society, found that by imitation he might become 
like to his god ; and by serving his god he learned 
to serve his brother, which service is the basic 
lesson of progressive growth. 

Herbert Spencer, the apostle of negation, in his 
autobiography frankly states in regard to religion : 

"Many have, I believe, recognized the fact that 
a cult of some sort, with its social embodiment, is a 



The Negro Problem 281 

constituent in every society which has made any 
progress, and this has led to the conclusion that the 
control exercised over men's conduct by theological 
beliefs and priestly agency has been indispensable. 
The masses of evidence classified and arranged in the 
Descriptive Sociology have forced this belief upon me 
independently; if not against my will, still without 
any desire to entertain it. So conspicuous are the 
proofs that among unallied races, in different parts 
of the globe, progress in civilization has gone along 
with development of a religious system, absolute 
in its dogmas and terrible in its threatened penalties, 
administered by a powerful priesthood, that there 
seems no escape from the inference that the mainte- 
nance of social subordination has peremptorily re- 
quired the aid of some such agency.' ' 

The experience of mankind and the history of 
nations have clearly demonstrated that irreligion 
is the sure precursor of social decay and ruin. A 
godless community is doomed, for it soon becomes 
the chosen home of vice and crime. The history 
of the world contains many epitaphs written 
large over the ruins of cities and nations which 
excluded religion from their civic and national life. 

"No state,' ' says Walter, "can subsist without 
religion, which fills and interpenetrates every sphere 
of life with the sense of the obligation of duty. Relig- 
ion, which respects and maintains every right of high 
and low, of strong and weak, is the conservative ele- 
ment of society. . . . By the strength of character 
which she forms, she preserves the youth of nations, 



282 Vital American Problems 

and, when they fall away and decay, keeps them from 
the withering up of mind and heart. Religion is the 
groundwork of family life, and of the purity and pi- 
ety nutured therein. . . . She brings rich and poor 
nearer together, urging upon the rich sympathy and 
active help to the poor, and instilling into the poor 
gratitude and consolation. Thus she softens every 
condition of life, and teaches man that he can be 
elevated and ennobled by submission. Religion, 
then, is the true bond which holds the state together, 
makes it strong, and saves it from degeneracy.' ' ! 

The present civilization in the United States 
rests upon the religious ideas of former generations, 
and the civilization of the future depends upon a 
due recognition of the principles of religion as the 
guiding motives in the development of the race 
and as underlying and permeating all helpful 
knowledge. 

The people of the United States have formally 
declared that the American government is founded 
on a belief in a God and that its existence is 
maintained through the grace of the Almighty. 
Thirty-one State constitutions use in their pre- 
amble the phrase "grateful to Almighty God." 
Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas have in their 
constitutions the words "invoking the favor and 
guidance " — or " the blessing " — " of Almighty 
God." All of the constitutions, Federal and State, 
with the exception of Michigan and West Virginia, 

1 Naturrccht und Politik, p. 237, Boner, 1871. 



The Negro Problem 283 

contain the name of God in some place, and in 
the constitutions of these states the freedom of 
conscience and of worship is emphatically decreed. 

Twenty-six States declare that it is the privilege 
of "every man to worship God according to the 
dictates of his own conscience "; eleven say that 
"the free enjoyment of religious sentiments and 
forms of worship shall ever be held sacred"; 
five assert that it is the "duty of the legislature 
to pass laws for the protection of religious free- 
dom.' ' Nineteen declare that "no human au- 
thority ought to control, or interfere with, the 
rights of conscience"; while nine ordain that "no 
person may be molested in person or estate on 
account of religion." 

In five States — Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, 
and the two Carolinas — no person can hold 
office "who denies the being of Almighty God or 
the existence of a Supreme Being"; Pennsylvania 
and Tennessee restrict office-holding to such as 
"believe in God and in a future state of reward 
and punishment"; Maryland requires this belief 
in a juror and witness, but in the office-holder 
demands only a belief in God. 

Presidents and governors in official documents 
recognize the dependence of the nation on God 
and the duty of gratitude to Him; the national 
and State legislatures are opened with prayer; 
a day of thanksgiving to God is set apart annually 
by the President and the governors of the several 



284 Vital American Problems 

States, while special days are occasionally desig- 
nated by the executives for religious observances; 
and the courts in nearly all the States have 
decided that we are a Christian people. 

Mr. Justice Story, in his inaugural address as 
Dane professor in 1829, said: 

" There never has been a period in which the com- 
mon law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its 
foundations. It repudiates every act done in viola- 
tion of its duties of perfect obligation. It pronounces 
illegal every contract offensive to its morals. . . . 
The error of our government, it has been asserted, 
is in reality of a different character: it tolerates no- 
thing but Christianity." 

The common law was adopted as the basic law 
of every State in the Union with the exception of 
Louisiana. 

Chief Justice George Shea, of the Marine Court 
of the City of New York, in quoting the above 
words of Justice Story, declared: 

44 Story might have added to his enumeration that 
laws in pursuance of the spirit of the Constitution 
prohibit, under penalties, the name of God being 
publicly blasphemously uttered, and will not allow 
the name of God to be wantonly or openly reviled 
to the annoyance of believers and bad example to 
the public. The sacredity of the Lord's Day is ac- 
knowledged, and contracts made on that day are 
invalidated. The conscience of each public servant 



The Negro Problem 285 

is bound by 'that adamantine chain, an oath,' to 
the throne of God, in the legislative, the judicial, the 
executive departments, from the President of the 
United States, from the Chief Justice of the United 
States, down to the humblest officer in the nation, 
State, municipality, or village. The Constitution 
expresses in these visible signs the substantial idea; 
it makes the reality of its Christian character; and 
it finally and affirmatively declares in express terms 
that the enactments which compose the Constitu- 
tion were 'done ... in the year of our Lord 1787/ 
It was the deliberate issue of religious traditions, cir- 
cumstances, convictions, and acknowledgments." 1 

So firmly are the people of the United States 
convinced of the necessity of the church as a 
social institution that they exempt church prop- 
erty from taxation. 

De Tocqueville, that close and accurate student 
of American affairs, has said, "I am certain 
that Americans hold religion to be indispensable 
to the maintenance of republican institutions.' ' 

The religious instinct in the negro race is so 
deep-seated, and so powerful as a guiding force 
in their life, that this fact cannot be lightly passed 
over in considering the social development of this 
people. 

The religious instinct in the American negro 
has developed into a system of superstitious 

1 The Nature and Form of the American Government , pp. 
60-64. 



286 Vital American Problems 

beliefs which color his thoughts and guide his 
acts, and which have become the most marked 
characteristic of the race. It has proved in the 
past but a minor factor in their development and 
is to-day retarding rather than helping their up- 
ward growth. Ignorance and the teachings of 
slavery are the causes of the perversion of the 
tendencies of this native faculty. 

In their childish way, the negroes long for and 
relish the supernatural; they love the worship 
of God and their hearts burn for more know- 
ledge of religious truths. 

It must not be forgotten that superstition is 
but the lowest form of religion and that the 
Christian, Judaic, Mohammedan, Confucian, Bud- 
dhist, Braham, and Hindoo sects but represent 
different intellectual strata in the development 
of religion. The superstitious negro is but an 
uneducated being who is capable by teaching of 
becoming a worthy member of any religious body. 
To-day, he may be groping blindly in the darkness 
in search of an unknown God, but to-morrow he 
is capable of emerging into the light and having 
his feet placed firmly on the way which leads to 
the highest conception of Almighty God. 

Religious Education. — "The great problem of life is 
education, " declares Professor Gates, of the Chicago 
Theological Seminary. * 4 The mind of the race is grow- 
ing all the while, and it is for the educator to see 
that these mental powers are developed in the right 



The Negro Problem 287 

direction. But no man's education is complete if 
religious instruction be omitted. One may know all 
mysteries of science and literature; he may sweep 
the heavens with the telescope, or peer into the 
secrets of nature with the microscope; but if in all 
this he sees not God, he is but poorly educated 
after all." 1 

This statement of the vital necessity of re- 
ligious truths being taught to every human 
being is to-day assented to by the great body of 
intelligent Americans with the exception of the 
comparatively few atheists, agnostics, and pure 
socialists, and that class of religionists who hold 
that the principles of morality can be inculcated 
without the teaching of religion. Books have been 
written and sermons preached with the two- 
fold object of inducing the American people to in- 
scribe over the portals of our common schools the 
words " Leave Religion behind, all ye who enter 
here," and of insisting that the teaching of morality 
be commingled with the lessons in secular studies. 
The position dictatorially taken that secular edu- 
cation should include the teaching of morality, 
and that religion should be excluded from the 
school curriculum, at once raises the question as to 
whether morality and religion can exist independ- 
ently of each other. 

Through the ages, philosophers in their secluded 
libraries, far away from contact with the reali- 

1 Biblical World, Sept., 1902. 



288 Vital American Problems 

ties of temptation, have propounded theories of 
righteousness upon which they have attempted 
to build systems of morality. Their treatises 
have attracted attention, and some few have 
endeavored to live by their precepts, but ere 
long their theories as guiding forces passed out 
of the minds of men, and are to-day relegated to 
the curio cabinets in which are collected the 
unworkable formulas for the regulation of life. 

If men and women were without passions, 
without inherited tendencies to vice, and were 
living in a pure atmosphere away from tempta- 
tion to do wrong, they might be taught to be 
good because to be good is right and proper and 
would insure human happiness. But as men 
and women are constituted with evil tendencies 
and inclinations, and are living in a world in 
which temptations to depart from pure and 
honest living are hourly besetting them, it is idle 
to expect that they will do right unless they 
believe in a God who rewards for the keeping 
and punishes for the violation of moral laws. 

Mere knowledge of what is right and what 
is wrong will never cause the doing of the 
right and the forsaking of those things which 
are wrong. Judas Iscariot knew the evil of 
treason, but he betrayed his Master. Some of 
the world's most noted criminals have talked 
glibly of the principles of morality and of the 
ethics of right doing. Morality to be effectual 



The Negro Problem 289 

must be governed by the will, and back of the 
will must lie a motive sufficiently powerful to 
force the will to definite action. 

Force from without may at times restrain the 
will from carrying out its resolves, but it cannot 
control the motives of the inner life which are the 
sources of human morality. Decrees of legis- 
lators, edicts of monarchs, commands of parents, 
and bayonets of armies never have and never can 
create a system of morals. 

"And what motives can the teacher of abstract 
morality propose, if he prescinds entirely from relig- 
ion ? M asked Rev. Francis Cassilly at the Conference 
on Religious Education in 1905. " He can tell the 
young man that stealing is wrong, that it is in bad 
form, that it is against the laws of his country; but 
what if the young man says that the possession of the 
stolen money is dearer to him than the approbation 
of his conscience, more than the esteem of his fellow- 
men, and that as to the laws of his country he will 
trust to his own shrewdness and to the cleverness of 
good lawyers to keep him out of prison? That is 
about as far as the teacher of simple morality can go. 
If he insists further that there is an obligation and a 
duty to keep from stealing, because God who is the 
Creator and Master of us all has forbidden it, and that 
if we disobey Him we shall incur His wrath in this 
world, and punishment in the next; if the teacher 
goes farther still and insists that God is our loving 
Father, who gives us every good blessing, that He 
loves His good children who obey his commands, and 

19 



290 Vital American Problems 

that He is wounded when we disregard them, that He 
will love and bless us in this world if we do His will, 
and that He will give us the delights of endless bliss 
in the next, why, the teacher certainly proposes effica- 
cious motives, which are sufficient to hold a man in 
check under the direst temptations and on the most 
secret occasions, but is he confining himself to teach- 
ing morality? Is such a teacher not inculcating relig- 
ion? He is assuredly basing his teaching on religious 
dogmas. He asserts that God exists, that He is the 
creator and father of the world, that He will reward 
the good and punish the wicked after death. Are 
not all these dogmas? And is not the inculcating of 
these dogmas religious teaching? In other words, to 
endeavor to teach morality without giving strong 
and sufficient motives is impossible, and strong and 
sufficient motives can be obtained only from the 
arsenal of religion." 1 

When the will has been clothed with righteous- 
ness and goodness, the life will reveal it in right 
and good deeds; when the will is depraved, the 
intellect will be guided into evil paths. Reason 
enlightens the will, but religion lights the fires 
that drive the will to act toward pure and noble 
ends. 

4 * Morality and religion are inseparable, " said Orestes 
A. Bronson, " for morality is only the practical appli- 
cation in the several departments of life of the prin- 
ciples of religion. Without religion, morality has no 
foundation, nothing on which to rest, is a baseless 

1 Conference Proceedings , Urbana, 1906, p. 17. 



The Negro Problem 291 

fabric, an unreality. Deny God, and you deny the 
moral law and the whole moral order, all right, all 
duty, all human accountability." 1 

President Eliot of Harvard has said: "No edu- 
cational system can be successfully carried on 
without education in morals, and no education 
in morals is possible without a religious life 2 "; 
while Mr. Frederick Harrison has written, "Mo- 
rality apart from religion is a rattling of dry 
bones.' ' 3 

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, 
spoke the words, which will go ringing down the 
years weighted with their mighty truths: 

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to 
political prosperity, religion and morality are indis- 
pensable supports. . . . Let us with caution indulge 
the supposition that morality can be maintained 
without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the 
influence of refined education on minds of peculiar 
structure, reason and experience both forbid us to 
expect that national morality can prevail in exclu- 
sion of religious principles." 

Well did the great Duke of Wellington under- 
stand and appreciate this fact, as is evidenced 
by his remarks on the proposed Education Act 
in December, 1840, when he exclaimed, "Take 
care what you are about, for unless you base all 

1 Works, vol. xiii., p. 309. 2 Outlook, January, 1898. 

3 Forum, December, 1891. 



292 Vital American Problems 

this education on religion, you are only bringing 
up so many clever devils! " 

1 'Mere culture of the intellect,' ' said Herbert 
Spencer, " (and education as usually conducted 
amounts to little more) is hardly at all operative 
upon conduct. . . . Intellect is not a power but an 
instrument — not a thing which itself moves and works, 
but a thing which is moved and worked by forces 
behind it. To say that men are ruled by reason is as 
irrational as to say that men are ruled by their eyes. 
Reason is an eye — the eye through which the desires 
see their way to gratification. And educating it only 
makes it a better eye — gives it a vision more accurate 
and more comprehensive — does not at all alter the 
desires subserved by it. However far-seeing you 
make it, the passions will still determine the directions 
in which it shall be turned — the objects on which it 
shall dwell. Just those ends which the instincts and 
sentiments propose, will the intellect be employed to 
accomplish ; culture of it having done nothing but in- 
crease the ability to accomplish them. . . . Did 
much knowledge and piercing intelligence suffice to 
make men good, then Bacon should have been honest, 
and Napoleon should have been just." l 

In the early history of the American colonies, 
mental and moral training were combined in 
nearly all the colleges as well as in all the schools 
for primary instruction. The books and studies 
from the primer to the commencement exercises 

1 Social Statics, pp. 173-174. 



The Negro Problem 293 

at the colleges were arranged with the convic- 
tion that the acquisition of knowledge and the 
teaching of religion could never be separated. 

At the Constitutional Convention, at which 
unified action was required of the delegates, it was 
found that the conflicting theological opinions 
of the colonists could not be reconciled, and the 
educational problem was ultimately solved by the 
exclusion of religious studies from all government 
schools. 

To-day, all instruction in public educational 
institutions is secular and only the material forces 
and facts are taught the students. The char- 
acter of the public education furnished has no 
power to restrain the evil passions or the natural 
propensities to wrong-doing, and the graduates of 
the government schools are sent out into the 
world unprepared to grapple with the workings 
of their inherent tendencies. 

The mere accumulation of knowledge cannot 
make an individual or a society better morally. 
Education of the mind is of immense value, as it 
enables the individual to distinguish right from 
wrong. But mental education is not a shield 
against immorality, nor a preventive of crime, 
nor a cure for cupidity. 

Pedagogy means "the guiding of children''; 
and in order to guide them properly it is neces- 
sary to know the goal to be reached. The true end 
of education is the harmonious development 



294 Vital American Problems 

of the whole man, the moral and spiritual as well 
as the physical and mental powers. To neglect 
any one part is to leave the work imperfect and 
men and women undeveloped and incomplete. 

Since education is the means by which the 
powers of a child are developed, and since the 
child possesses a religious nature, it is imperative 
that religious instruction be given if the true end 
of education is to be reached and the child 
brought into the fulness of his powers. 

If religion comprised merely a set of crystallized 
dogmas to be studied in the same manner as the 
alphabet and geography, and had no application 
to life ; if a knowledge of religion was required for 
priests and ministers only and used solely by 
experts as in the cases of law and medicine; if 
religion was to be translated into life only on 
Sundays and on special days set apart for its 
observance, then the teaching of religion would 
have no place in the general education of the 
young and it would properly be taught only in 
elective courses in the higher institutions of learn- 
ing and in theological seminaries; but, as all 
history, all philosophy, and all literature is shot 
through with religion it should rightly have an 
important place in every school and college in our 
land. 

"I do not believe that improvement is to be sought 
by substituting religious instruction for secular instruc- 
tion, or by superadding one to the other as though 



The Negro Problem 295 

the two were separate/ ' says Dr. Arthur Twining 
Hadley. " I do not believe that you can prepare a 
man for citizenship by teaching a godless knowledge 
in one part of the school time and a set of religious 
principles in another part; any more than you can 
prepare a man for heaven by letting him cheat six 
days of the week and having him listen to the most 
orthodox doctrines on the seventh. I believe that 
both in school life and in after life the moral training 
and the secular training must be so interwoven that 
each becomes a part of the other." 1 

Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commis- 
sioner of Education, in an address before the Na- 
tional Educational Association in July, 1903, said 
that the principle of secular education is demon- 
stration and verification, and that a mind trained 
to demonstration and verification "is necessarily 
hostile and sceptical in its attitude towards 
religious truths," and, therefore, he urges "the 
separation of the church from schools supported 
by public taxes." 

If a child, at an age when its mind is most re- 
ceptive and retentive of mental impressions, is sub- 
jected for five days in the week to a training which 
cultivates an attitude that "is necessarily hostile 
and sceptical in its attitude towards religious 
truths," and on one day in the week is taught relig- 
ious truths, it is reasonable to assume that the child 
will eventually become irreligious, if not atheistic. 

1 Baccalaureate Addresses, p. 194. 



296 Vital American Problems 

If the teaching of the public school "is neces- 
sarily hostile and sceptical in its attitude towards 
religious truths," then the school is working against 
the church. And when the school occupies five 
times as much of the thought of the child as does 
the church, religion will have no place in his life. 

If the United States Commissioner of Education 
has rightly interpreted the effect of public school ed- 
ucation on the minds of scholars, his interpretation 
is the severest indictment that could be uttered 
against the system of instruction now provided. 

But the teaching of the facts of life has never 
stunted the mind of the child so that it lost its 
natural inquisitiveness and its innate desire to 
know the nature of the forces which have brought 
the facts into existence. The awakening of the 
mind to a knowledge of the social, political, and 
economic forces which rule the world has always 
had the effect of stimulating a desire to know 
their origin, nature, and development. And as 
religion has been the great developmental force 
in the world, and has vitally affected all other 
forces and conditions, the study of religion at 
the same time the secular studies are prosecuted 
would have a tendency to throw such illumina- 
tion upon the dry facts of life that it would add 
immeasurably to the interest the student would 
find in his work. 

But it is said that the common schools are not 
irreligious, but non-religious. No clearer or more 



The Negro Problem 297 

illuminating discussion of this subject has been 
written than the words of Brother Asarias: 

" Religion is not a garment to be donned or doffed 
at will. It is not something to be folded away care- 
fully as being too precious for daily use. It is rather 
something to be so woven into the warp and woof 
of thought and conduct and character, into one's 
very life, that it becomes a second nature and the 
guiding principle of all one's actions. Can this be 
effected by banishing religion from the school- room? 
Make religion cease to be one with the child's thoughts 
and words and acts — one with his very nature — at a 
time when the child's inquisitiveness and intellectual 
activity are at their highest pitch ; cause the child to 
dispense with all consciousness of the Divine Source 
of light and truth in his thinking ; eliminate from your 
text-books in history, in literature, in philosophy, the 
conception of God's providence, of His ways and 
workings, and you place the child in the way to 
forget, to ignore, or mayhap deny that there is such 
a being as God and that His providence is a reality. 
The child is frequently more logical than the man. If 
the thought of God, the sense of God's intimate pres- 
ence everywhere, the holy name of Jesus be elimi- 
nated from the child's consciousness and be forbidden 
his tongue to utter with reverence in prayer during 
school hours, why may not these things be eliminated 
outside of school hours? Why may they not be 
eliminated altogether? So may the child reason; so 
has the child reasoned." * 

1 Essays Miscellaneous, " Religion in Education," pp. 70-71. 



298 Vital American Problems 

"Can we hope to build up a God-fearing people, a 
people fit to be trusted with domestic management 
and guardianship of the commonwealth, if they are 
trained up with the conviction that religion, the only- 
basis of morality, is a proscribed and outlawed 
thing during the best and highest hours of the day, 
through the tenderest and most impressionable years 
of life?" 

pertinently asked very Rev. A. P. Doyle in his 
address on " How can Christian ideals be made 
dominant in a commercial era? " * 

"It is all idle, it is a mockery and an insult to 
common sense," said Daniel Webster in his argument 
on the Girard College case, " to maintain that a school 
for the instruction of youth, from which Christian 
instruction by Christian teachers is sedulously and 
vigorously shut out, is not deistical and infidel in its 
purpose and its tendency/ ' 

It has been suggested that it is safe and suffi- 
cient to trust the Sunday-schools and similar 
meetings on Sunday to furnish to children the 
religious instruction needed to mould their lives. 
The utter inadequacy of such religious training 
is plainly apparent when we consider the limited 
time devoted to such work during each week and 
the practical impossibility of obtaining the attend- 
ance of the children who most need religious 
instruction — those who have none to look after 

1 Religious Education Association, Feb. 5-7, 1907. 



The Negro Problem 299 

them and those whose parents are indifferent to 
the claims of religion. 

To trust the busy, the indifferent, and the 
irreligious parents to instill into the minds and 
hearts of their children the religious principles 
which will bear fruitage in honest, upright, moral 
living, is likewise foolish. If a nation is to ad- 
vance, each succeeding generation must be wiser 
and better than the preceding one. And if to 
the parents is confided the sole religious training 
of their own children, how can the children be 
expected to be better than their parents? Addi- 
tional help must be given, so that proper relig- 
ious training may be brought to those children 
whose parents are unwilling or unable to properly 
teach them. 

Professor E. R. Morrison of San Bernadino, 
California, has written these words: 

" That some change in the educational system of the 
country is imperatively required, seems to be generally 
admitted. It is an educational system which fails to 
educate. If our schools are doing their work efficient- 
ly, how comes it that our criminal statistics are the 
most terrible which the world has to show? " * 

The prevalence of crime in America, however, 
cannot with justice be laid to the character of the 
public schools. The fault may be in the homes, in 
the churches, in the public press, or in the social 

1 Educational Review, November, 1897. 



300 Vital American Problems 

or industrial organization, or in all combined. 
But the contention is here made that the public 
schools in excluding religion from the secular 
studies are not furnishing a sufficient check to the 
development and spread of crime. 

For many years after emancipation, the edu- 
cators of the negro race thought that intellectual 
brightness was the only thing needed to transform 
the colored child (for such was the negro in 1863 
and such is the mental condition of the great mass 
of the race to-day) into a well-rounded, valuable 
citizen. And it was not until General Samuel 
Chapman Armstrong took up the study of the 
education of the negro that it was at all realized 
that, in the words of the General, " Spelling books 
do not, as a matter of course, make manly fibre, 
and practical self-restraint is not the immediate 
result of learning." 

As a result of the discovery made by General 
Armstrong, it slowly began to dawn upon the 
thoughtful minds in the South that character 
and conduct are in reality the primary objects 
of education. From that time onward a new 
method of education was introduced into a few 
of the private schools, and in its limited applica- 
tion has brought forth results gratifying beyond 
measure. 

Without character, all the knowledge that the 
schools can impart would be of but little value to 



The Negro Problem 301 

man, white or colored. The business of educators 
is to form character, to make men. To educate the 
conscience, the basis and mainspring of character, 
there must be implanted in the human mind and 
developed in the human life the fundamental prin- 
ciples of society, the doctrines of morality, and 
the truths of the highest conception of religion. 

The common schools and the colleges of the 
class of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell, 
which admit the negro to their class-rooms, do 
some good for the colored race. But as such insti- 
tutions do nothing but train the intellect, they 
are not furnishing the kind of education needed 
to solve the negro problem. 

It is at such schools and colleges as Atlanta, 
Fisk, Leland, Clark, Wilberforce, Shaw, and 
Howard Universities, Mehany Medical College, 
Spelman Seminary, and Hampton and Tuskegee 
Institutes, where the development of character 
is the chief work of instruction, that is to be found 
the education most required. At these institutions 
the negro is taught his responsibility to God, and 
is made to realize that he has been placed on 
earth to live as a child of God by developing him- 
self physically, intellectually, morally, and spirit- 
ually, so as to be able to teach his fellows how to 
live the best and the fullest life. 

There is no conflict in the work done by these 
several institutions; " indeed,' ' declares Dr. Du 
Bois, "all who are working for the uplifting of the 



302 Vital American Problems 

American negro have little need of disagreement if 
they but remember this fundamental and un- 
changeable truth: that the object of education is 
not to make men carpenters, but to make car- 
penters men." 

Churches — The mission of all churches in 
America is to teach men and women how to live 
the fullest and most complete life and thereby 
to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. 

As teacher, the church should come into daily 
contact with her charges, if she is to do her work 
properly and well. The difference in the effect 
of occasional or intermittent teaching and regular 
and systematic teaching of the young by religious 
bodies is well illustrated in the results of the work 
of Protestant and Catholic churches in America 
to-day. 

The loosening of the hold of the Protestant 
churches upon men and women and the lack of 
religious principles and the indifference to the 
claims of religion on the part of Protestants are 
so pronounced that this deplorable condition is 
constantly commented on in newspapers, in maga- 
zines and in the books of the day. The main reason 
for the growth of irreligion among the members of 
the Protestant churches is to be found in the fact 
that it is only on one day in seven in which they 
can exercise their authority as teacher and guide. 
From Sunday to Sunday they keep aloof from their 



The Negro Problem 3°3 

members and permit the world to neutralize or 
supersede their influence. 

By way of contrast, the Catholic Church is 
holding her members with a firm hand, primarily 
because of her watchful care over the children. 
She believes in the old saw attributed to King 
Solomon that "as the twig is bent the tree 's in- 
clined,' ' and exercises the utmost diligence in 
seeing that, while the child is growing physically 
and mentally, his religious and moral develop- 
ment keeps pace with his bodily and mental 
growth. She insists that her children be educated 
in schools where religious and secular instruction 
are blended and where the child is taught the 
inseparableness of education, religion, and life. 
Only by means of church schools does she believe 
it possible to prevent the children from drifting 
into the condition of infidelity and immorality 
for which the present godless public school system 
of education is in a large measure responsible. 

"The church greatly needs the school," declares 
Samuel T. Dutton, Superintendent of Schools, Brook- 
line, Mass. " I doubt if it could exist without it. 
The Christian fathers of early times evidently 
thought so, because every church had its school, and 
in this country . . . the church would fare but 
poorly unless the school did its saving work. The 
very foundations of character upon which the church 
has to build are laid in the school, and, considering 
how the shaping of life depends upon early nurture, 



304 Vital American Problems 

the school seems to stand first as an influential means 

of Christian training." 1 

As the public schools are irreligious in char- 
acter, in that they banish religion from the studies 
taught, and thereby impliedly belittle in the 
child's mind the importance of religious truths, 
the Protestant churches have but weak allies 
in their work of developing character. 

It is not to be expected that children will care 
anything for moral character if for five days in 
the week they are taught all about mathematics, 
geography, spelling, reading, literature, and the 
sciences, but nothing about morality. They are 
logical enough to conclude that the subjects they 
are taught in school are the most important 
things in life, and that those left untaught are of 
no particular value. And when religious instruc- 
tion is limited to an hour or two on Sunday, it is 
no wonder that the children grow up to think 
that religion is but an ornamentation of the mind 
to be used only on the Sabbath. Every attempt 
to preserve something as especially sacred by 
setting it apart from the rest of life has always 
resulted in its being left apart and out of vital 
contact with life. 

Without the assistance of the schools, the 
churches are almost impotent in their work; 
with the schools as allies, their power would be 
unmeasurable. 

1 Social Phases of Education, p. 192. 



The Negro Problem 3°5 

The two centuries of American slave trade had 
destroyed the tribal life of the African coast 
negroes and had brought about the mingling of 
clans and of religious beliefs which resulted in 
a chaos of religious ideas. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century the African negroes' 
religion had degenerated into animal- worship, 
fetichism, and a belief in sorcery and witchcraft. 

The negroes which were brought to America 
were possessed with a strong tendency to nature- 
worship and with a firm belief in witchcraft. These 
pagan beliefs were allowed to grow practically 
unchecked and unmodified, because of the wide- 
spread idea that it was contrary to law to hold 
Christians as slaves, and the masters were more 
attached to their property than they were inter- 
ested in the spread of the gospel in which they 
professed to believe. 

So prevalent was this idea throughout the 
colonies, that New York in 1706 passed the fol- 
lowing act : 

"Whereas, Divers of her Majesty's good subjects, 
inhabitants of this colony, now are, and have been 
willing that such Negroes, Indian and Mulatto slaves, 
who belong to them, and desire the same, should be 
baptized, but are deterred and hindered therefrom 
by reason of a groundless opinion that hath spread 
itself in this Colony, that by the baptizing of such 
Negro, Indian or Mulatto slaves, they would become 
free, and ought to be set at liberty. In order, there- 



306 Vital American Problems 

fore, to put an end to all such doubts and scruples 
as have, or hereafter any time may arise about the 
same: 

" Be it enacted, etc., That the baptizing of a 
Negro, Indian, or Mulatto slave shall not be any cause 
or reason for the setting them or any of them, at 
liberty." 1 

Other colonies followed the example of New 
York by declaring that the Christian baptism of 
the negro had no effect on the master's right and 
title to own and hold him as slave and chattel. 
The result of these acts was that a large number 
of slaves applied for admission into the Christian 
Church. So great became the number of negro 
Christians that the question arose as to whether 
it would be wiser to allow the master and slave to 
worship in the same church, or to permit the 
slaves to have churches of their own. Both plans 
were adopted. Soon, however, the masters began 
to fear the effect of the regular meeting of slaves, 
and in 17 15 North Carolina passed an act which 
declared : 

"That if any master or owner of Negroes or slaves, 
or any other person or persons whatsoever in the 
government, shall permit or suffer any Negro or 
Negroes to build on their, or either of their, lands, 
or any part thereof, any house under pretense of a 
meeting-house upon account of worship, or upon any 

1 Geo. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America, 
vol. 1., p. 141. 



The Negro Problem 307 

pretense whatsoever, and shall not suppress or hinder 
them, he, she, or they so offending, shall for every 
default, forfeit and pay fifty pounds, one-half toward 
defraying the contingent charges of the government, 
and the other to him or them that shall sue for the 
same." 1 

Maryland, Georgia and other colonies followed 
the example of North Carolina, until it became 
true, as Brackett says, that "any privileges of 
church-going which slaves might enjoy depended 
much, as with children, on the disposition of the 
masters/ ' 

In 1 83 1, Virginia declared that neither slaves 
nor free negroes might preach, nor, without per- 
mission, attend religious services at night. In 
North Carolina slaves and free negroes were 
forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach "in any 
prayer-meeting or other association for worship 
where slaves of different families are collected 
together, " on penalty of not more than thirty- 
nine lashes. Maryland and Georgia had similar 
laws. The Mississippi law of 183 1 read: "It is 
unlawful for any free negro or mulatto to preach 
the gospel" upon pain of receiving thirty-nine 
lashes upon the naked back of the presumptuous 
preacher. If a negro received written permission 
from his master he might preach to the negroes 
in his immediate neighborhood, providing six 
respectable white men, owners of slaves, were 

1 Laws of 1 71 5, Ch. 46, Sec. 18. Bassett, Colony, p. 50. 



308 Vital American Problems 

present. In Alabama the law of 1832 prohibited 
the assembling of more than five male slaves at any 
place off the plantation to which they belonged, 
but nothing in the act was to be considered as 
forbidding attendance at places of public worship 
held by white persons. No slave or free person 
of color was permitted to * 'preach, exhort, or 
harangue any slave or slaves, or free per- 
sons of color, except in the presence of five 
respectable slaveholders or unless the person 
preaching was licensed by some regular body of 
professing Christians in the neighborhood, to 
whose society or church the negroes addressed 
properly belonged." 1 

The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and 
Georgia declared in 1833: 

" There are over two millions of human beings in 
the condition of heathen and some of them in a worse 
condition. They may be justly considered the heathen 
of this country, and will bear a comparison with 
heathen in any country in the world. The negroes 
are destitute of the gospel, and ever will be under the 
the present state of things. In the vast field extending 
from an entire State beyond the Potomac [i.e., Mary- 
land] to the Sabine River [at the time our south- 
western boundary] and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, 
there are, to the best of our knowledge, not twelve 
men exclusively devoted to the religious instruction 
of the negroes. In the present state of feeling in the 

1 The Negro Church, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, p. 25. 



The Negro Problem 309 

South, a ministry of their own color could neither be 
obtained nor tolerated. 

"But do not the negroes have access to the gospel 
through the stated ministry of the whites? We answer, 
no. The negroes have no regular and efficient minis- 
try; as a matter of course, no churches; neither is 
there sufficient room in the white churches for their 
accommodation. We know of but five churches in 
the slave-holding States built expressly for their 
use. These are all in the State of Georgia. We may 
now inquire whether they enjoy the privileges of the 
gospel in their own houses, and on our plantations? 
Again we return a negative answer. They have no 
Bibles to read by their own firesides. They have no 
family altars; and when in affliction, sickness, or 
death, they have no minister to address to them the 
consolations of the gospel, nor to bury them with 
appropriate services.' ' 

But, despite law and oppression, in 1859 there 
were 468,000 negro church members reported 
in the South. l 

One of the first results of the Civil War was 
the expulsion of negroes from white churches. 
The Methodist Church South set its Negro mem- 
bers bodily out of doors; the Baptists and the 
Episcopalians, through persistent neglect and har- 
assment, gradually induced the black communi- 
cants to leave their churches. To-day, there can 
be found throughout the South hardly a single 
negro member of any white church. 

1 Ingleside Lights, p. 273. 



3io Vital American Problems 

In 1903, the membership of negro church bod- 
ies in the United States, not including foreign 
mission membership, was as follows : 

Denominations. Minis- Churches. Member- 

ters. ship. 

Baptists 10,720 15,614 1,625,330 

Union American Method- 
ists 180 205 16,500 

African Methodists 6,500 5,800 785,000 

African Union Methodist 

Protestants 68 68 2,930 

African Zion Methodists. . . 3,386 3,042 55 I ,59 I 

Congregational Methodists . 5 5 319 

Colored Methodists 2,159 *,497 207,723 

Cumberland Presbyterians. 450 400 39,000 
Methodists (Methodist Epis- 
copal) ... 245,954 

Congregationalists 139 230 1 2,1 55 

Episcopalians 85 200 15,000 

Presbyterians 209 353 21,341 

Catholics ... 



23,90! 27,614 3,522,843 

There are in the United States the following the- 
ological schools designed especially for Negroes : 



Founded. 
Atlanta Baptist College, Atlanta, Ga., Baptist.. 1867 

Union University, Richmond, Va., Baptist 1867 

Biddle University, Charlotte, N. C, Presbyterian 1867 

Howard, Washington, D. C, non-sectarian 1870 

Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, Presbyterian 187 1 
Talladega , Talladega, Ala., Congregational 1872 



The Negro Problem 311 

Stillman, Tuscaloosa, Ala., Presbyterian 1876 

Gammon, Atlanta, Ga. Methodist Episcopal. . . . 1883 
Braden, Nashville, Tenn., Methodist Episcopal. . 1889 
King Hall, Wash., D. C, Protestant Episcopal. . 1890 
Wilberforce, Wilberforce, Ohio, African Meth- 
odist Episcopal 1891 

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., Congrega- 
tional 1892 

Straight University, New Orleans, La., Congre- 
gational 

At these schools in 1903 there were thirty-three 
teachers and 368 theological students. Of these 
students sixty were college graduates. The total 
number of theological graduates in 1903 was 
1259. 1 

There is an adequate number of churches for 
the negroes throughout the Southland. There 
is, to-day, a church organization for every sixty 
negro families. The churches are doing a grand 
work, but a work not commensurate with the 
demand — the demand being for less religious 
emotionalism and for more religious instruction. 

The improvement in the method of presenting 
religious truths will depend solely on the educa- 
tion of the clergy. Higher intellectual standards 
should be set for admission into the ministry in 
order that more practical advice may be given 
from the pulpit. The negro should be taught 

1 The Negro Churchy edited by W. E. B. PuBois, pp. 125 & 
190. 



312 Vital American Problems 

that his life in the hereafter will depend on his 
life here and now ; that religion is a help to right 
living and that a religious man is one who not 
only believes in God, in immortality and in the 
brotherhood of man, but who also lives honestly 
and decently, and who through the exercise of all 
his faculties — physical, mental, moral, and spirit- 
ual — becomes a good citizen, a good neighbor, a 
good husband and a good father. He should be 
taught that honest, faithful work is ennobling^ 
and that to do one's work well is of greater worth 
and of more importance than to sing hymns or to 
attend camp-meetings. 

"The boy should be taught that the labor by 
which he has to gain his living is itself the divinely 
appointed channel for his true inner life to flow in. 
It is by that business he will be judged, whether it be 
selling bacon or teaching philosophy; it is in and 
through his daily relations as hirer and hired, buyer, 
and seller, that his chance is given him, and almost 
wholly in these." 1 

Stress should be laid on the performance of 
duties during the week rather than on the observ- 
ance of ceremonial acts on the Sabbath day. Re- 
ligion is doing rather than believing, serving 
rather than dreaming. 

The three great educational agencies arc the 
home, the school, and the church. The homes of 

1 S. S. Laurie, Training of Teachers, p. 235. 



The Negro Problem 313 

the negroes are doing little to upbuild character; 
the public schools attended by negro children 
do nothing but train the intellect, leaving the 
character untouched; and, therefore, the negro 
church is practically the only agency which is 
engaged in the work of shaping and moulding 
character. 

If the church remains content to exert her 
influence only on one day in seven, and then only 
on those whose inclination prompts them to 
place themselves under her authority, she must 
not be surprised if the life in the home, in the 
school, and in the outside world outweighs and 
neutralizes her teachings. 

The mission of the church is broader than 
the observance of the Sabbath and the teach- 
ing of religion on that day ; her mission includes 
the teaching of religion seven days in each week. 
To do her full duty to mankind, the Protest- 
ant and Catholic churches should establish one 
or more schools in every city, town, and village 
throughout the Southland. In such schools, relig- 
ious instruction should be coupled with the pre- 
scribed studies taught in the public and manual 
training schools, so that the negro boys and girls 
may have an opportunity to develop all their 
faculties and to grow into well-rounded men and 
women. 

By the establishment of a school in connection 
with the church, the church will properly begin 



314 Vital American Problems 

her work of developing the negro race along the 
lines which will elevate these people and enable 
them to perform their duties as citizens with 
credit to themselves and with benefit to the nation. 
Unless the churches throughout the Southland 
will take charge of the instruction of negro children 
on week-days as well as on the Sabbath, they will 
not be doing their full share of the work of solving 
the negro problem. 



II— IDEALS 

FOR many centuries the negro civilization in 
Africa has remained nearly stationary. The 
progress, if any, the negro race on that continent 
has made is almost imperceptible. 

In early days the African negro helped the 
Egyptians to build the magnificent temples of 
Ramses, to rear the massive columns of Karnak, 
and to hang the hundred gates about the city of 
Thebes. With fear and trembling, he witnessed 
the invasion of the Assyrians, and, before fleeing 
into the desert, he beheld the fall of Egypt. He 
gazed upon the conquering Persians and the 
warlike hosts of the Hebrews. He assisted in the 
rearing of Carthage and saw the shining armor 
of the Roman legions as they took possession of 
the land. The fair-haired giants of the North 
appeared before him as they drove the Romans 
to destruction. From the distance the banners 
of the Crusaders picturesquely fluttered before 
his gaze as the religious army marched toward the 
Holy Land; and centuries later, he witnessed the 
"Little Corporal, " surrounded by his faithful 
troops, bowing before the mighty sphinx. 

315 



316 Vital American Problems 

Civilizations rose and fell, the arts and 
sciences flourished and died and disappeared, 
and the negro remained unaffected by any of 
the changes taking place about him. He was 
content with his lot; he was unambitious to 
live in a way different from that in which he 
was born. He gave no anxious thought for the 
morrow; to eat, to drink, and to be merry was 
his only concern. 

Left to himself, the negro has done nothing to 
elevate himself or to improve his surroundings. 
His transfer from Africa to a life of slavery in 
America but slightly changed his character. The 
life of an American slave gave him no ambition, 
no incentive to be other than he was in his native 
land. 

The curse of the negro through the centuries 
that have come and gone has been that he has 
never had implanted within him a vision of a 
fairer land and of a higher life ; that no ideal to 
become a nobler man has ever burned within his 
breast. 

It is important to remember, when considering 
the negro race in America, that the negro has no 
past history from which he can draw inspiration; 
that but few members of his race can trace their 
genealogy back four generations; that the blood 
of all the ethnic types that go to make up American 
citizenship flows in the veins of a large proportion 
of his race; and that his blood has been vitiated 



The Negro Problem 317 

so as to weaken that pride of ancestry which is 
the foundation stone upon which racial pride must 
be builded. Further, it must not be forgotten 
that the negro, with comparatively few excep- 
tions, has no home life and no family ties; that 
he lives apart from white people, his Southern 
settlements being marked by a boundary line 
beyond which he is prohibited from going and 
over which no white man ever openly steps. He 
goes to separate churches, is separated in public 
gatherings, and travels apart from the white 
man. "From the cradle to the grave' ' he lives 
and moves and has his being away from white 
people. 

The negro in the South has no opportunity to 
gain a knowledge of right living and of the funda- 
mental principles which underlie an enlightened 
civilization from social intercourse with cultured 
and educated white Americans; he views them 
from afar, and looks upon their style of living as 
belonging peculiarly to the white race, and, not 
finding his own people adopting their customs, 
he imagines that their kind of life and their man- 
ner of living are not for him. 

Unfortunately true it is that the only white 
people with whom he is permitted to come into 
contact are those whose influence is degrading. 
The white man's saloon cordially welcomes him, 
the white gambler is racially color-blind, and the 
immoral are unmindful of his dark skin. 



318 Vital American Problems 

To the white race the negro never looks for 
examples ; if he seeks at all for an ideal or a leader, 
he seeks among his own people. For "the head 
that the great body of our colored citizenship 
will ultimately follow, is not found on the shoul- 
ders of any class of white men/' 1 

The tendency of man is to approach to the 
standard set up by the best of those of his own 
race around him. Being human, the negro looks 
up to the man who possesses more property than 
he does, and respects the man who through honest 
labor is enabled to live in a better house amid 
more cheerful surroundings than the one in which 
he himself resides. And if the negro colony has 
no member who is superior in intelligence and in 
character to the rest of the community, nor one 
who lives in a more civilized fashion than his 
neighbors, what incentive can there be for in- 
dividual improvement? 

Imitation is one of the most important forces 
in the development of the social life. There is 
no medium through which a human being receives 
more from others than from the process of imita- 
tion. The child imitates his parents as the 
parents imitate their neighbors. The spread of 
the industrial arts, the advancement of science and 
learning, and the general use of modern appliances 
all point to the importance of imitation in the 
practical affairs of life. 

1 U. S. Bureau of Education, 1902, p. 85. 



The Negro Problem 319 

"We are affected by the judgment of those about 
us, whether we will or no," asserts Dr. Arthur Twin- 
ing Hadley, " and many of those who most loudly 
protest that they are living their life for themselves 
are really just as much affected as any one else. ' If 
the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand I am not 
of the body, is it therefore not of the body? ' Amid 
the daily contact of our social life habits of thought, 
standards of value, subtle influences in the estimate 
of right and wrong, pass from man to man just as 
quietly and unconsciously as the blood passes from 
one part of the body to another, bearing seeds of life 
or death to the whole body, as the case may be. By 
this subtle contact a sort of public conscience is 
created ; a habit of valuing things, not for their effect 
upon the individual, but for their relation to certain 
standards of the community, commercial or political, 
moral or religious." 1 

Professor Baldwin spoke truly when he said : 

11 A man is a social outcome rather than a social unit. 
He is always, in his greatest part, also some one else. 
Social acts of his — that is, acts which may not prove 
anti-social — are his because they are society's first; 
otherwise he would not have learned them nor have 
had any tendency to do them. Everything that he 
learns is copied, reproduced, assimilated from his 
fellows: and what all of them, including him — all his 
fellows, the socii — do and think, they do and think 
because they have each been through the same course 
of copying, reproducing, assimilating, that he has 

1 Baccalaureate Addresses, pp. 205, 206. 



320 Vital American Problems 

When he acts quite privately, it is always with a boom- 
erang in his hand; and every use he makes of his 
weapon leaves its indelible impression both upon the 
other and upon him." 1 

This subtle process of interchange of ideas 
creates a social conscience and a social standard 
or morality. What is known as "public opin- 
ion " is but the composite view of society on a 
given subject. The social mind, in the words of 
Professor Charles H. Cooley, 

"is an organic whole made up of co-operating in- 
dividualities, in somewhat the same way that the 
music of an orchestra is made up of divergent but 
related sounds. . . . The view that all mind hangs 
together in a vital whole, from which the individual 
is never really separate, flows naturally from our 
growing knowledge of heredity and suggestion, which 
makes it increasingly clear that every thought we 
have is linked with the thought of our ancestors and 
associates, and through them with that of society 
at large. . . . 

"The unity of the social mind consists, not in 
agreement, but in organization, in the fact of re- 
ciprocal influence or causation among its parts, by 
virtue of which everything that takes place in it is 
connected with everything else, and so is an outcome 
of the whole. Whether, like an orchestra, it gives 
forth harmony may be a matter of dispute, but that 

1 Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 81. 



The Negro Problem 3 21 

its sound, pleasing or otherwise, is the expression of a 
vital co-operation, cannot well be denied." 1 

Deliberate imitation is comparatively rare, 
while imitation of the suggestive order is univer- 
sal and constant. If people about us are walk- 
ing fast, we unconsciously quicken our pace; if 
they are rushing toward a single point, we feel 
an impelling influence to join them. Thus mobs 
are formed and mob-action is accomplished. 
Panics are in the same way brought into exist- 
ence. In every province of life, among every 
race of human beings, a multiform social knowl- 
edge is arising, and, mingling with the moral im- 
pulse, is forming a system of national ideals which, 
through leadership and emulation, are gradually 
working their way into practice. Phillips Brooks 
has wisely said : 

" We often hear the cry, ' Principles, not men.' But 
to send out principles without men is to send an army 
of ghosts abroad who would make all virtue and man- 
liness as shadowy as themselves. It is principle brought 
to bear through the medium of manhood that draws 
and inspires.' ' 

Men and women of character and education, 
fitted to be leaders among their own people, 
must be furnished to every negro settlement, if 
the race is to be lifted up to and placed upon a 
higher plane of thought and life. 

1 " Social Consciousness/ ' Am. Journal of Sociology, 
March, 1907, p. 675. 



322 Vital American Problems 

" Knowledge of life and its wider meaning has been 
the point of the negro's deepest ignorance, and the 
sending out of teachers whose training has not been 
merely for bread-winning, but also for human culture, 
has been of inestimable value in the training of these 
men," 

are the words written by the leading sociologist 
of the colored race, Dr. W. E. Burghardt DuBois 
of Atlanta University, an institution engaged pri- 
marily in this very work. 1 

No nation, no people without a Utopia ever 
advances. Without the dreaming of dreams and 
the indulgence of visions, stagnation and retro- 
gression will assume their fatal sway. Though 
the dream may never be realized, no vision of a 
fairer earth leaves man quite where it found him. 

" What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me, " 

says Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra, and it may well 
comfort any one. For the ideal, which is the 
creative force behind action, changes the worth 
of man, if he struggles up towards it, even though 
the ideal be unrealized. 

1 ' Where there is no vision the people perish/ ' 
are the prophetic warning words carved in stone 
on the outer walls of the University of Geneva. 

No Utopia can be imposed from without. It 
must grow up within the human heart and in the 
very heart of society. It is largely the result of 

1 The Negro Problem, p. 55. 



The Negro Problem 323 

that education which widens a man's horizon and 
imparts a desire to progress upward and to possess 
the best things of earth. An ideal is the most 
practical thing in the world, for it is the force 
which compels action. 

The teacher, the preacher, the lawyer, the physi- 
cian, having graduated in his chosen profession at 
Atlanta, Fisk, or kindred Universities and having 
learned at the institution the value of a civilized 
mode of life, who goes into a settlement of his 
fellows and builds a home of several rooms and 
marries and devotes himself to his family, cannot 
help creating an atmosphere, the influence of 
w r hich will slowly but surely lead others to live as 
he does. This leaven in the community will in 
time cause the discarding of the one-room cabin 
and of the indiscriminate herding of young and 
old, of families and strangers, and will reveal the 
beauty and joy of home life amid cheerful sur- 
roundings, where morality and the principles of the 
higher life are respected and adopted ; this leaven 
will eventually arouse and encourage the colored 
man and the colored woman to develop all the 
possibilities for good which exist in them. 



Ill— POLITICS 

IN 1867, the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
United States Constitution was adopted. 
This amendment prohibited every State from 
depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property 
without due process of law, " and from denying to 
any person "the equal protection of the laws." 
Two years later (1869) the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment was added to the Constitution. This new 
article prohibited every State from denying the 
rights and privileges of suffrage to any citizen 
of the United States "on account of race, color, or 
previous condition of servitude." 

Contrary to the general opinion, this provision 
"does not confer the right to suffrage on any one. 
It prevents the States of the United States from 
giving preference in this particular to one citizen 
of the United States over another, on account of 
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 
Before its adoption this could be done." ! So that 
to-day the Constitution of the United States de- 
clares and firmly fixes the right of American male 

» United States v. Reese, 92 U. S., 214. 

324 



The Negro Problem 325 

citizens — black and white — to vote upon the same 
terms. 

Despite and in defiance of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, the negroes in six Southern States have been 
practically disfranchised. True, the State suf- 
frage laws which have been enacted appear not 
to discriminate between the races, but under their 
enforcement, they have the effect of excluding 
the negro male citizens from voting. 

In Virginia, the suffrage qualification is the 
payment of a poll-tax or the record of service in 
time of war in the Army or Navy of the United 
States, or of the Confederate States; in South 
Carolina, the payment of a poll-tax and the owner- 
ship of $300 worth of property, or the ability to 
read and write any section of the State Constitu- 
tion; in North Carolina, the ability to read or 
write, or having an ancestor who was entitled to 
vote prior to January 1, 1867; in Alabama, the 
payment of a poll-tax; in Louisiana, the owner- 
ship of $300 worth of property, or the ability to 
read and write, or having had a father or grand- 
father who was entitled to vote on January 1, 
1867; in Mississippi, the payment of a poll-tax 
and the ability, if not to read, to understand and 
explain the Constitution. 1 

Despite the manifest discrimination and favor- 
itism contained in the special exception clauses, 
if the suffrage laws were applied with equal 

1 World 1908 Almanac and Encyclopedia, pp. 240, 241. 



326 Vital American Problems 

impartiality to the members of both races, very 
little legitimate objection could be raised to them- 
But in their practical operation, the male negro 
citizens are in these States almost entirely ex- 
cluded from voting. The " character' ' and " un- 
derstanding' ' tests leave virtually full power with 
the registration officers, who usually see that the 
white race controls the election. 

Senator B. R. Tillman of South Carolina, in a 
recent lecture, frankly admitted in regard to his 
State what he asserted is the condition in all the 
Southern States: 

"In 1895 we changed our constitution and dis- 
enfranchised every negro we could. There were 
140,000 of them, and when we got through there were 
only 15,000 that could register." 1 

These acts of Southerners were necessary in 
order to overthrow negro political supremacy and 
to place decent white men in political power. The 
citizens of the former slave States, having griev- 
ously suffered financially from the political rule 
of illiterate negroes and the white carpet-baggers 
who were their leaders, saw only one way to obtain 
possession of the machinery of government, and 
that was by disfranchising the negro citizens. 
When it is considered that there are 225,000 more 
negroes than white people in South Carolina, and 
265,000 more negroes than white people in Miss- 

1 Lecture, Buffalo, N. Y., Nov. 30, 1907. 



The Negro Problem 327 

issippi, and that in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and 
Louisiana the white majority is small, the reason 
for the political action of citizens of these States 
becomes plain. 

To take away from the negro not only his right 
to vote, but also all hope of ever obtaining that 
right, will retard his advancement and blacken 
his future. To permanently disfranchise the ne- 
gro, after he has tasted of democratic political 
freedom, will destroy the mutual respect, confi- 
dence, and good-will which should exist between 
the races. If such an act were perpetrated, the 
whites would grow to fear, distrust, and hate the 
negro because of the wrong they had done him; 
and the negro would return this fear, distrust, and 
hatred while brooding over the degraded position 
in which, without his fault, he had been placed. 
His primitive instincts would urge him to create 
race feuds and conflicts which would end only 
after years of bloodshed, in the extinction of the 
negro race. It would cause a large part of the ne- 
gro laborers to become restless and discontented 
with their civil position, thereby lessening their 
efficiency to do good work and to produce the best 
results. Their energy, instead of being devoted 
to production, would be spent in fomenting la- 
bor disturbances and in planning as to how little 
they could give in exchange for the wages paid. 

The freest and most intelligent labor is the 
most productive. The American laborer holds the 



328 Vital American Problems 

front rank among the laborers of the world, be- 
cause he has received an education and has 
participated in the affairs of government by his 
power to vote. The American laborer, because of 
his education and of his governmental responsi- 
bility, is alert, assertive, resourceful, independent, 
and self-respecting ; he is able to take care of him- 
self and to compete with his fellows at home and 
abroad. 

The ballot was thrust upon the negro; it was 
not the result of his seeking. The war being 
over, the government, wishing to withdraw the 
United States troops from the South, felt that it 
could not safely do so without giving to the negro 
a weapon with which he might protect himself. 
Especially was this so in view of the conditions 
described by Mr. Justice Miller in the Slaughter- 
House Cases: 

"The process of restoring to their proper relations 
with the Federal government and with the other 
States those which had sided with the rebellion, under- 
taken under the proclamation of President Johnson 
in 1865, and before the assembling of Congress, 
developed the fact that, notwithstanding the formal 
recognition by these States of the abolition of slavery, 
the condition of the slave race would, without further 
protection of the Federal government, be almost as 
bad as it was before. Among the first acts of legisla- 
tion adopted by the several States, in the legislative 
bodies which claimed to be in their normal relations 



The Negro Problem 3 2 9 

with the Federal government, were laws which im- 
posed upon the colored race onerous disabilities and 
burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit of 
life, liberty, and property to such an extent that 
their freedom was of little value, while they had lost 
the protection which they had received from the 
former owners from motives both of interest and 
humanity." 1 

And as the ballot is the strongest weapon of 
defence under a democratic form of government, 
the Constitution was amended and the negro was 
politically enfranchised. 

It was a grave mistake to give the ballot to the 
negro in the first place, and then, after he became 
a voter, to undertake the work of educating him 
to appreciate the value and to exercise aright the 
political privilege conferred. The result of such 
an act was that corruption in politics spread faster 
than did the education of the voter, and to-day 
a large proportion of the negroes in the South are 
inoculated with the idea that politics is but a 
method of private gain. 

How true was the prophecy uttered by Henry 
Ward Beecher in his sermon on October 29, 1865, 
and how important it is to-day to let its truth 
sink into our minds and hearts. With clarion 
tones he thundered forth the words : 

"You may pass laws declaring that black men are 
1 16 Wallace, p. 70, 



33° Vital American Problems 

men, and that they are our equals in social position; 
but unless you can make them thoughtful, industrious, 
self-respecting, and intelligent, unless, in short, you 
can make them what you say they have a right to be, 
those laws will be in vain. . . . You will never be 
able to secure it [suffrage] and maintain it for him, 
except by making him so intelligent that men cannot 
deny it to him. You cannot long, in this country, 
deny to a man any civil right for which he is mani- 
festly qualified." 

Hon. James K. Vardaman, Governor of Miss- 
issippi, has wisely said: 

"This inestimable privilege was thrust upon the 
negro, snatching him out of his twenty thousand 
barbaric years and placing him shoulder to shoulder 
with the heir of all the ages. This was a stupendous 
blunder, worse than any crime, and the sober second 
thought of the nation should correct it." 

The South is right in its efforts to purge the 
ballot of ignorance and crime. But let the South- 
ern white man remember that voting is necessary 
to modern American manhood and that no human 
being has the right to retard the development 
of the negro laborer, artisan, and land-owner who 
is thrifty, honest, and educated. Let him not 
forget that " taxation without representation is 
tyranny," just as much to-day as it was in 1776. 
And may he ever remember his duty to uphold 
the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the 



The Negro Problem 331 

United States, by which the States are forbidden 
to deny the right of any citizen to vote "on 
account of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude.' ' 

Suffrage means self-government. Self-govern- 
ment implies intelligence, self-control and capacity 
for co-operative action. If these qualities are 
lacking in the voters, the ballot only paves the 
way for the "boss" and the corruptionist. 

No reasonable objection can be raised against 
the individual States providing an educational 
or a property qualification for voting, a qualifica- 
tion which will give evidence of the ability of the 
voter to use the ballot for the benefit of the com- 
munity, provided such qualification is honestly 
and fairly applied to all citizens, irrespective of 
race or color. This reward for acquiring educa- 
tion or property will stimulate the negro to make 
the most of himself and will encourage him to 
win for himself a place of honor and of power. 
The right to vote, when conferred as a reward of 
merit, will mean something higher and more 
sacred than it now does; the lesson such a course 
will teach is that the colored man, as well as the 
white man, must stand on his own merits and be 
judged according to his own work. This will give 
the negro something to work for and something 
for which to live. It will provide a new standard 
by which the negro will be judged ; he will then be 
considered as an individual and not as one of a 



33 2 Vital American Problems 

mass, an unseparated member of a race, as he is 
looked upon to-day. The negro criminal will 
then be dealt with as a criminal; the reputable 
negro will be esteemed for his good character; 
the successful negro merchant and professional 
man will be honored according to his work; and 
each man, whether he be white or colored, will 
be judged on his own merits and will stand or fall 
on his own showing. 

That it is most important to cease considering 
the negro as the race and to begin to look upon 
him as an individual, is evident by the words of 
President Roosevelt in his message to Congress 
on December 5, 1906, in which, after referring 
to the prevalent practice of attacking the whole 
negro race when one of its members commits a 
crime, he admirably stated: 

1 'There is but one safe rule in dealing with black 
men as with white men ; it is the same rule that must 
be applied in dealing with rich men and poor men; 
that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his 
creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice 
on his real worth as a man. White people owe it quite 
as much to themselves as to the colored race to treat 
well the colored man who shows by his life that he 
deserves such treatment; for it is surely the highest 
wisdom to encourage in the colored race all those 
individuals who are honest, industrious, law-abiding, 
and who, therefore, make good and safe neighbors and 
citizens. Reward or punish the individual on his 
merits as an individual. Evil will surely come in the 



The Negro Problem 333 

end to both races if we substitute for this just rule the 
habit of treating all the members of the race, good and 
bad, alike. There is no question of social equality 
or negro domination involved; only the question of 
relentlessly punishing bad men, and of securing to the 
good man the rights to his life, his liberty, and the 
pursuit of his happiness as his own qualities of heart, 
head, and hand enable him to achieve it." 

"For us to ask the negro boy to submit to a test 
which we are unwilling to apply to our own sons, 
would be in my judgment/ ' said Edgar Gardner 
Murphy, " a reflection upon the capacity of our white 
population; and our people, wherever it may be 
attempted by the politician of the hour, will come 
so to regard it." 

White Americans should give to negro Ameri- 
cans the democracy defined by James Russell 
Lowell as "that form of society, no matter what 
its political classification, in which every man has 
a chance and knows that he has it." 1 

The time has now come for Southerners to rid 
their minds of the absurdity of connecting political 
rights with social equality. The right to vote and 
to hold office has no connection whatever with the 
right to social intercourse or the entry into the 
marriage state. The social divisions in the North 
are numerous and deep, and the mere practice 
of political equality gives no means whatever of 
passing from one social set to another. The 

1 Address before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, 
Oct. 6, 1884, 



334 Vital American Problems 

social status of a citizen is never determined by 
his political position in the community. The 
Southern view should be so modified until the 
matter of voting and of holding office is looked 
upon as a duty and not as a card of admission into 
society. 

If the negro, as some anthropologists claim, be- 
longs to an inferior race, and by reason of his lack 
of mental vigor and power of mental control is 
incapable of attaining the stage of culture reached 
by the white American, then there is no danger 
of " negro supremacy' ' should a high educational 
standard be provided as a condition to voting. 
And if the negro, as Senator B. R. Tillman asserts, 
is "characterized by thriftlessness and lack of 
sustained effort, and ... of living for to-day 
while to-morrow can take care of itself, " and that 
"there is no known method of increasing the 
efficiency of negro labor, and that ... it is 
almost inevitable that white immigrants in the 
near future will take the place of negroes and 
compete successfully in the field of cotton produc- 
tion " — then will not the danger of "negro supre- 
macy' ' disappear and the white race be placed in 
the absolute control of the political machinery 
of government by providing for a property quali- 
fication for voting? 

If, on the other hand, as some anthropologists 
contend, there is no evidence of a decided men- 
tal inferiority on the part of the negro, and the 



The Negro Problem 335 

mere fact of the retarded development of the race 
cannot be considered as an indication of their 
future achievements, then what danger can 
arise from the voting of a people qualified as 
equally as all others as to education and property 
ownership, if an educational and property quali- 
fication is required as a prerequisite for voting? 

When a suffrage plan is adopted requiring a 
reasonable property and educational qualification 
as a prerequisite to voting, and when the suffrage 
laws are interpreted and applied with equal fair- 
ness and justice to the white and the negro 
citizens, many phases of the negro problem will 
be in the way of a speedy solution, and many 
of the misconceptions now existing, which bar the 
upward progress of the race, will pass away. 



IV— SOCIAL EQUALITY 

DURING the whole period of slavery the crime 
against white women did not exist, nor did 
it exist to any considerable extent for some years 
after emancipation. During the war, the men 
were away from home serving in the army, fighting 
heroically to keep the negro in perpetual slavery, 
and the negroes were the loyal guardians of the 
women and children and the faithful toilers not 
only for the support of the families in their charge, 
but also for the sustenance of the entire Confede- 
rate army. And to the credit of the race it may 
be said that there is not a single instance re- 
corded where the negro in any way attempted 
to outrage the family of his master or to injure his 
property. 

Then came the period of reconstruction, with 
its unwise and corrupt teachings. Among these 
was the teaching that as the colored man was now 
the equal of the white man he must actively assert 
his equality. He was given the assurance that 
he was the ward of the nation and that the govern- 
ment would sustain him in his struggle with his 

336 



The Negro Problem 337 

former masters. These teachings took deep root 
in his mind and have slowly but persistently 
grown with the years. 

This crime had its origin in the teaching of the 
equality of the races. The intelligent negro may 
understand what political equality truly means, 
but to the ignorant negro, equality signifies not 
only the right to vote, but also the privilege to 
enjoy equally with the white men social inter- 
course with white women. The two millions of 
mulattoes in the South are the only records of 
morality that many of the negroes have been 
given to study. The colored men have not 
forgotten that their mothers and grandmothers 
in slavery were not allowed to be modest or to 
follow the instincts of moral rectitude. They 
remember that throughout the whole country a 
colored woman did not know a single man to 
whom she could legally go for protection against 
the man who owned her body and soul. Small 
wonder is it, therefore, that this crime is so fre- 
quent in certain sections of the South when we 
consider the large number of young negroes who 
are- without education and the possession of any 
past family and racial history save the horrible 
tradition of the condition under which their 
mothers and grandmothers were forced to live. 

To teach the negro the true meaning of the term 
"equality," the rope and the torch have been 
used. To further create race antagonism, to 



338 Vital American Problems 

brutalize by the sight of torture, to arouse feelings 
of vengeance, to inflame to the uttermost the 
power of criminal suggestion — is this the way to 
uplift the negro so that he will abhor this crime? 
Whatever may be the motives which induce the 
adoption of these so-called " remedies,' ' the fact 
remains that punishments do not prevent crime. 
On the contrary, each application of mob rule 
has been followed by new outbreaks of the same 
offence, and the commission of the most atro- 
cious crimes within short intervals thereafter. 

The South maintains the policy that within her 
own borders the color line be drawn firmly and 
unflinchingly in all the social relations of the 
races. She concedes, yea, even practises, justice 
toward the negro and disregards the color line 
in such extra-social matters as business, litera- 
ture, science and art. Is this attitude of the South 
in demanding social separation unfair, unjust, and 
inequitable ? 

If the barrier raised by white Southerners 
between the races was to be broken down, the 
Southern Caucasian, as a race, would be doomed. 
The white and the negro races in the South are 
so near equal in numbers that, were this social 
partition wall to be removed, the mingling of the 
races would immediately set in and would proceed 
steadily until both peoples as separate races 
would disappear. Between the white and the 
black races there exist natural physical differences 



The Negro Problem 339 

and a barrier raised by thousands of years of vary- 
ing development, so that the white and the black 
people cannot unite without the white race losing 
some of its power, though at the same time the 
black race may gain a temporary benefit. 

Mr. James Bryce in his Romanes Lecture of 
June 7, 1902, on "The Relations of the Advanced 
and the Backward Races of Mankind/ ' says: 

"Where two races are physiologically near to one 
another, the result of intermixture is good. Where 
they are remote, it is less satisfactory; by which I 
mean not only that it is below the level of the higher 
stock, but that it is not generally and evidently better 
than the lower stock. . . . But the mixture of whites 
and negroes or of whites and Hindus, or of the 
American aborigines and negroes, seldom shows good 
results. The hybrid stocks, if not inferior in physical 
strength to either of those whence they spring, are 
apparently less persistent, and might — so at least 
some observers hold — die out if they did not marry 
back into one or other of the parent races. Usually, 
of course, they marry back into the lower. . . . 
The two general conclusions which the facts so far as 
known suggest are these : that races of marked physi- 
cal dissimilarity do not tend to intermarry, and that 
when and so far as they do the average offspring is 
apt to be physically inferior to the average of either 
parent stock, and probably more beneath the average 
mental level of the superior than above the average 
mental level of the inferior. . . . Should this view be 
correct, it dissuades any attempt to mix races so 



340 Vital American Problems 

diverse as are the white European and the 
negroes.' ' 

Professor Louis Agassiz realized this keenly. In 
1863 he wrote, "Social equality I deem at all 
times impracticable — a natural impossibility from 
the very character of the negro race." 

To protect and preserve the race, Southerners 
have found that it is imperative that no social 
intercourse should exist. By ' ' social intercourse " 
is meant the mingling of the white and black 
races in their homes and in the social life. 

In the North, with its few scattering negroes, 
the problem of the mingling of the races through 
marriage is practically unknown. The difficulties 
and dangers existing in the South, requiring the 
separation of the races, never confront them. 
The possibility of miscegenation is not suggested 
to them or, at least, it is seldom, if ever, brought 
home to them. 

Professor Albion W. Small has well stated the 
reason for the difference between the race-senti- 
ment in the South and in the North in the following 
words : 

" A visitor from the North goes to a Southern State, 
and before he has been there an hour, if he mingles 
with the people, he detects a something in the social 
tone which he has read about, but never before 
distinctly experienced. He finds himself among some 
of the most genial, warm-hearted, high-minded people 



The Negro Problem 341 

he has ever seen; but he finds them governed by a 
code of sentiments toward the colored man which 
seems to him unintelligible and inconsistent. The 
Northern man does not know how to draw the distinc- 
tions in his conduct toward the black man which the 
Southern man draws instinctively; and, on the other 
hand, the Northern man will draw lines at points 
where the Southern man does not feel the need of 
them. Here are two different spiritual environments. 
The Southern man lives in an environment of race 
distinctions. The Northern man lives in an environ- 
ment of merely personal distinctions. To the North- 
ern man personal likes and dislikes, social inclusion 
or exclusion, will depend on the individual. His 
being a negro makes no more difference than his being 
a Spaniard or Italian or Russian or Englishman. To 
the Southern man the idea of a socially acceptable 
negro is a contradiction of terms." 1 

Let the people of the North look at the question 
from the standpoint of the South as it exists amid 
the conditions of the Southland, and the actual 
peril of the situation will at once appeal to them, 
and they will immediately throw the whole w eight 
of their authority to preserve intact the white 
race in America. 

Well has Mr. William Benjamin Smith said: 

" We do not deny that there may be cases that move 
our sympathy; that appeal strongly to our sense of 
fair play, of right between man and man. In and 
of itself, it may sound strange and unjust and even 

1 General Sociology, p. 485. 



342 Vital American Problems 

foolish to deny to Booker Washington a seat at the 
table of a white man, even should he be distinctly 
Mr. Washington's inferior. But the matter must 
not be decided in and of itself — no man either lives 
for himself or dies for himself. It must be judged in 
its larger bearings, by its universal interests, where 
it lays hold upon the ages, under the aspects of eter- 
nity. We refuse to let the case rest in the low and 
narrow category of Duty to the Individual ; we range 
it where it belongs, in the higher and broader cate- 
gory of Obligation to the Race." 1 

If white men of equal ability and standing to 
Mr. Washington should visit at the same house, 
sit down at the same table and enjoy social inter- 
course with him, the example set would pave the 
way for white and black people enjoying the 
same degree of intelligence, wealth, or position, 
to mingle on the same basis of social equality, 
and men and women of the negro race, from the 
lowest and most ignorant class upward, would 
feel the right to meet socially with their white 
neighbors. If the social barrier should be broken 
down anywhere, it would result in the final over- 
throw of all barriers between the races; for a 
privilege granted to one member of a race is 
naturally deemed a right conferred on all. 

It is the duty of civilization always to protect 
the higher races against the deteriorating in- 
fluences of the lower races. This does not mean 

1 The Color Line, p. 26. 



The Negro Problem 343 

that the lower races should be prevented from 
rising, but that they should not be permitted to 
break down the higher. 

The negro race must preserve its race identity 
and work out its own salvation as a separate and 
distinct race. For two distinct peoples to live 
in the same land, friction and race prejudice will 
inevitably occur. But for two races, though sep- 
arate and distinct as to color, hair, and cranial 
measurement, and differing as to stages of develop- 
ment, to live under one government side by side 
in the same land, with mutual progress, in peace 
and happiness, does not seem impracticable in the 
advanced civilization of the United States. 

Laws have been enacted in every State of the 
South forbidding the intermarriage of the races, 
and separating the two peoples in theatres, hotels, 
public conveyances and in every sphere of life 
where the arm of the law can extend. Legally 
the white and the black people in the South are 
separated beyond the reach of personal contact 
but at the same time the white man practises 
in secret and almost with impunity a species of 
polygamy with black women. The reason for the 
existence of this state of affairs is twofold, — the 
want of standing of the colored woman before the 
courts and the indifference of the white women of 
the South. 

Mr. A. H. Grimke has recently declared: 

"No colored girl, however cruelly wronged by a 



344 Vital American Problems 

white man in the South, will be able to obtain an iota 
of justice at the hands of that man in any court of law 
in any Southern State, or get the slightest hearing or 
sympathy for her cause at the bar of Southern public 
opinion." i 

Too long have the white women of the South 
tolerated the illicit relations of white men with 
black women; too long have they condemned 
their colored sisters and overlooked the guilt 
of their white brothers. The large number of 
mulatto children in the Southland is a striking 
testimony to the continued existence of this 
awful state of affairs. 

It is to the white women of the South that the 
negro race must look for the reformation of the 
white men. If the white women were to take 
the part of the sometimes persecuted and the 
many times unmoral black women, and were to 
stamp the seal of their disapproval and disgust 
on the acts of white men in regard to their illicit 
practices, they would win for themselves a higher 
place in the estimation of the black man ; but more 
— by raising the morals of their white men they 
would at the same time lift up the morals of the 
women of the black race. 

Let the white women of the South remember 
and carefully ponder the truth stated by Rev. 
A. D. Mayo: 

1<4 The Heart of the Race Problem/' The Arena, June. 
1906, p. 608. 



The Negro Problem 345 

"The ordinary unchaste negro woman is not the 
* fallen woman' of the old civilization, but a half -ani- 
mal creature, on her way up from the lower realm 
of human existence to a family life in accord with 
the fundamental virtues of a Christian civilization." * 

Men will rise to the level of any standard that 
women set for them. If the women are immoral, 
morality will be unpractised, for it is the teaching 
of morals at the mother's knee that counts in the 
formation of character. High, noble, and strong 
ideas in regard to morality and rigid adherence 
thereto by the women are absolutely essential 
if the men are to live decent, moral lives. 

The present standard is due largely to the 
ignorance or indifference of the white women of 
the South. When women will resolve never to 
receive into their drawing-room in friendly inter- 
course with their own daughters the man who 
has stepped beyond the color line in his private 
social relations, and will refuse to permit their 
daughters to marry such a man, no matter how 
great his wealth or how high his position, a long 
step will have been taken to protect the negro 
girls and to preserve the separateness of the races. 

The sanest and surest way to teach the negro the 
sacredness of white womanhood is for the white 
men of the South to revere and guard all women 
whether of colored or of white skin. The equal 
protection of colored and white women by white 

1 U. S. Bureau of Education, 1902, p. 108. 



346 Vital American Problems 

men will undoubtedly awaken a kindred senti- 
ment in the minds and hearts of negro men which 
in time will irradicate the deplorable crime against 
white women. 

The black women of the South must be guarded 
as sacredly by law and by public opinion as are 
the white women, if both the white and black 
races are to grow upward in the scale of life, and 
civilization is not to be retarded in its higher 
development. The double standard must be 
blotted out and a single one erected in its stead, 
applicable to both races, or ultimately both peo- 
ples are bound to deteriorate. 

The absence of the crime against white women 
during slavery was due more to the feelings that 
existed among the negroes themselves than to 
any measure for protection adopted by the white 
man. The negro had the same animal instincts 
during the slavery period that he exhibits to-day ; 
the punishment that follows the commission of 
the crime at the present time is no more certain 
and terrible than it could have been before the 
Civil War. The ideas and feelings of the negro 
have been perverted by acts of racial antagonism, 
by the talk of the social equality of the white and 
the colored races, and by the lack of a strong, 
restraining public opinion among the negroes 
themselves. Punishment, no matter how severe, 
will never prevent or deter the commission of this 
crime. Ignorance, idleness, shiftlessness, out of 



The Negro Problem 347 

these evils does this crime spring. Industrial and 
moral education as taught at Hampton and 
Tuskegee Institutes, intellect and character-build- 
ing as developed at Atlanta and Fisk Universities, 
strike directly at the evils which foster this crime. 
This is proven by the fact that not one of the 
hundreds of graduates who have gone out from 
these institutions have been guilty of it. 



V— FEDERAL AID 

THE people of the United States who conferred 
upon the negro the full rights and privileges 
of citizenship impliedly assumed the task of edu- 
cating him to understand the duties and to exer- 
cise the privileges in such a way as to redound to 
the best interests of the whole people. This obli- 
gation was at once realized and the Freedmen's 
Bureau was organized under the Federal govern- 
ment. 

Since the discontinuance of the Freedmen's 
Bureau in 1869, however, the United States has 
shirked its duty by ceasing to provide the means 
whereby the negro might learn to properly exer- 
cise his privilege of suffrage. 

The Southern States have done much to educate 
the negro by establishing and supporting free 
public schools, and the negro race has given 
largely to provide its own people with teachers 
and schools; and yet, to-day, a large number of 
negroes in the Southland are receiving no educa- 
tion whatever, and a still larger number are re- 
ceiving so little schooling as to be of slight avail 

348 



The Negro Problem 349 

to them. And the negro race, comprising about 
one ninth of the population of the country, is 
admittedly unqualified to perform the duties of 
citizenship, thereby creating an evil which threat- 
ens the very stability of the government. 

The Southern States are doing all that can be 
asked of them, and the negroes are giving as largely 
as can be expected. If additional help is to be 
afforded, it is to the United States, which is 
responsible for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments to the Constitution, that the people 
of the South as well as the people of the North are 
beginning to turn. 

The South' s problem is the nation's problem. 
There can be no sectional problem in a single 
country. One part depends on all other parts 
as one organ of the human body depends for its 
health and its growth on all the other organs. 
The uplifting of the negro is a national task. 
There is a common responsibility resting on the 
shoulders of all Americans wherever they may 
reside. 

"It is the right and duty of the State to see that 
all proper means are taken to preserve and perpetuate 
its life, as much as it is the right and duty of the in- 
dividual thus to preserve his life. If the State neglects 
to do this, it fails to fulfil its mission and the divine 
purpose concerning it, and deserves to die. It be- 
comes therefore the solemn and imperative duty of 
the State to see that every child within its bounds 



35° Vital American Problems 

receives an education that will fit it to become a use- 
ful member of society, and a healthy member of the 
State life." 1 

The supreme end of the education which is 
supplied by general taxation is to develop good 
citizens; for upon the character of its citizens 
depends the preservation of the government and 
the full development of its life. 

The requisites of good citizenship are threefold : 

(i) Intelligence: A mind educated so as to be 

able to correctly understand and to properly 

weigh the questions of government submitted 

to the voters for their adoption or rejection. 

(2) Responsibility: That personal interest in the 
government which arises out of the ownership 
of property earned by honest toil upon which 
taxes may be levied for the support of the 
government. 

(3) Character: That combination of qualities 
and principles which enables one to withstand 
temptations and to do what is right and to leave 
untouched the things that are wrong. 

What the State needs in relation to its legitimate 
ends, or the ends for which it was instituted, it 
has the right to establish and control. Ignorance 
and immorality are the two greatest evils menacing 
the State. For the protection of its life and for 

1 Open Letter of Boston Committee of One Hundred, 
October, 1888. 



The Negro Problem 351 

the promotion of the public good, the Federal 
government has the right to eradicate these evils 
and, therefore, is in duty bound to destroy them. 
This is the legitimate end for which the American 
government was organized. 

To furnish education to the children of negro 
citizens, schools should be established and should 
receive financial assistance from the national 
government. Such schools should recognize the 
threefold educational qualifications for voters, 
and, in addition to furnishing the regular common 
school secular studies, should provide that manual 
training go hand in hand with the intellectual 
work, in order that the youths may learn how to 
earn a living and to accumlate property which 
may be the subject of taxation. Further, the 
principles of religion should be interwoven into 
all the work of the school so that character may 
be formed and strengthened. The generations 
which have come and gone have proven the wis- 
dom of the saying of that ancient seer King 
Solomon: " Train up a child in the way he should 
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 
"Whatever we wish to see introduced into the 
life of the nation/ ' said the great German scholar 
William von Humboldt, "must first be intro- 
duced into its schools." 

The Ordinance of 1787 provided that "religion, 
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good 
government and the happiness of mankind, schools 



35 2 Vital American Problems 

and the means of education shall forever be 
encouraged.' ' 

The United States government, owing to the 
lack of religious harmony among the delegates 
to the Constitutional Convention, was given no 
spiritual or religious function, and therefore is 
authorized to furnish only secular education. It 
has no power to pronounce on religious matters, 
no authority to determine the validity of any 
religious creed. To discriminate in favor of any 
one creed, to the exclusion of all others, would be 
unconstitutional. With far-seeing wisdom our 
forefathers enacted the following, being the First 
Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of 
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. " 

To undertake the development of character 
in its citizens by instilling the fundamental prin- 
ciples of religion, the Federal government is power- 
less. This work must be done by the churches in 
co-operation with the government schools. With 
the assistance of the churches, the national 
government may provide the means for the full 
development of negro citizens of the highest type. 

Let Congress pass a law recognizing the fol- 
lowing principles and embodying the following 
provisions : 

i. The democratic form of government of the 
United States rests upon the education of the people. 

2. The Federal government having conferred 



The Negro Problem 353 

the rights, privileges, and duties of citizenship 
upon negroes upon the same terms as bestowed on 
white citizens, and such negroes as a class being 
unfit to properly exercise their privileges as 
citizens, it is the duty of the Federal government 
to protect and preserve itself by providing the 
necessary means wherewith to educate the negro 
citizens to wisely use the powers of government 
conferred upon them. 

3. All negro parents who are mentally and 
morally competent to have the care and custody 
of their children should be permitted to select 
the schools in which their children shall receive 
instruction. 

4. The Federal government has no right to 
force upon any negro child any particular teacher, 
book, or system of religious or non-religious 
instruction. 

5. The business of educating negro children 
should be open to private enterprise and to free 
competition. No discrimination should be made 
between State public schools and private educa- 
tional institutions. 

6. The Federal government should recognize 
the right of the individual States to prescribe the 
secular studies to be taught in all schools, pub- 
lic and private, whether secular or religious, and 
only such schools as fully comply with the State 
education laws should be entitled to receive 
financial aid from the national treasury. 



354 Vital American Problems 

7. A religious school should be entitled to re- 
ceive aid from the Federal government on the 
same terms as all other schools, public and pri- 
vate, provided it has complied with the following 
conditions : 

(a) That the school building has been properly 
inspected and approved as to hygienic and gen- 
eral structural conveniences by the government of 
the city, town, or village in which such school is 
located. 

(b) That the secular studies taught are those 
prescribed by the State government. 

(c) That the amount of secular instruction 
given is equal to the amount prescribed by the 
State for its public schools. 

(d) That it permits the same periodical in- 
spection by the State authorities as is applied to 
the State schools. 

(e) That if religious instruction is given, in 
addition to the prescribed secular studies, no 
part of the money furnished by the Federal gov- 
ernment should be used to pay for the giving of 
the same. 

(f) That its teachers possess the same certifi- 
cates and diplomas that are required by the State 
for teachers to possess in order to secure positions 
in the State schools. 

(8) The board of management of all schools, 
public and private, should be paid for teaching 
negro children an annual allowance of $ per 



The Negro Problem 355 

capita for all negro children passing an examina- 
tion prescribed and conducted by State officials. 
Such examination and the standard of correctness 
required should be the same as is provided for 
like grades in all public schools. 

If the churches and the Federal government 
will co-operate in organizing and conducting 
schools in which the head, the heart, and the 
hand are trained, the negro race will grow into 
citizens of whom the whole nation will some day 
be proud. 



VI— CONCLUSION 

LET not the North judge the South too harshly. 
The ignorant Southerner may hate the 
Qfegro, the Southern working man may fear his 
competition, the sordid money-lender may wish 
to keep him in ignorance, the corrupt politician 
may endeavor to count him as a voter and at the 
same time prevent him from voting, and some of 
the educated Southerners may see a menace to 
the country in his upward development, but the 
better class of the South, notably the sons of 
the old masters, are endeavoring to help him to 
rise, by paying taxes to maintain Mbgro schools, 
and by using their power to protect him in the 
possession of life and property. 

The policy of an enforced ignorance is illogical, 
un-American, and un-Christian. It is indefen- 
sible on any ground of social or political wisdom 
and is unsupported by any standard of ethics or 
justice. Education is an indispensable condition 
to wealth and prosperity. Ignorance inevitably 
acts as a brake on the wheels of the industrial 

356 



The Negro Problem 357 

and political coaches moving toward prosperity 
and perfection. 

The curse of the race is that the ideal of the 
majority of negroes is to be men of leisure, rather 
than to grow to be expert workmen. To the 
average negro there is no joy in the doing of 
work. By trampling on the very condition of joy- 
ous work, work is robbed of its immense happi- 
ness-producing power. In reality — and this fact 
should be brought home to the minds of all negro 
citizens — work is one of the things for which man- 
kind ought daily to render thanks to the Creator. 

Education of the mind, skill of hand, ideas of 
thrift and economy, a spirit of independence, and 
Christian character are the sum total of the 
education the negro requires. 

The great mass of the negro race need com- 
mon-school education, coupled with manual train- 
ing and a well-grounded knowledge of religious 
principles. "Mental development, alone," says 
Mr. Booker T. Washington, "will not give us 
what we want, but mental development tied to 
hand- and heart-training, will be the salvation of 
the negro." 

A few select negroes need a higher or college 
education, such as is furnished at Atlanta and 
kindred universities, so as to become teachers of 
teachers and "to be leaders of thought and 
missionaries of culture among the masses." 

And all negroes require that development of 



35 s Vital American Problems 

character which is possible only by the absorp- 
tion, assimilation, and practice of those religious 
principles which enable one to live a noble, 
self-sacrificing, serviceable life. 

Equal political privileges with white men — 
privileges based on the possession of intelligence 
and property — are essential to the well-being of 
the race and to its development along American 
lines. 

That the negro failed to use the political privi- 
leges conferred on him with the wisdom shown 
by white citizens is no excuse for withholding 
the ballot from him. When considering the 
question of the political elimination of the negro 
or the advisability of allowing him to exercise 
equal political privileges with white men, it would 
be well to consider the words of truth and of 
wisdom uttered by Hon. Elihu Root, Secretary of 
State, in the course of his lecture at Yale College 
on the " Responsibilities of Citizenship," when he 
said: 

" Another lesson the experience of popular govern- 
ment has already made plain is that the art of self- 
government does not come to men by nature. It has 
to be learned ; facility in it has to be acquired by prac- 
tice. The process is long and laborious; for it is not 
merely a matter of intellectual appreciation, but 
chiefly of development of character. At the base 
of all popular government lies individual self-control 
and that requires both intelligence, so that the true 



The Negro Problem 359 

relation of things may be perceived, and also the moral 
qualities which make possible patience, kindly con- 
sideration for others, a willingness to do justice, a 
sense of honorable obligation, and capacity for loy- 
alty to certain ideals. ,,1 

The manual training of the negro has not 
created industrial war between the white and the 
colored races. There is no prejudice on the part 
of the Southern white man against the negro as a 
skilled laborer, as all his life he has been accus- 
tomed to do business with the negro in that 
capacity. 

The South is ready and willing to give equal 
industrial opportunities to honest and skilled 
laborers of both races, for it realizes that the way 
to promote and maintain friendly relations 
between the races is for all dwellers in the South- 
land to live and labor with mutual respect. 

The whole field of industry is open to him. The 
Southern whites are not troubled by his efficiency, 
but by his inefficiency. He is welcome to every 
field of labor that he is capable of performing. 

The South, in contradistinction to the North, 
has in no way abridged the negro's right to 
earn his bread in any direction of human inter- 
est or of honest effort. And the opportunity to 
earn what will supply all needs of human life lies 
at the foundation of individual advancement, 
for but a favored few are able to love what is 

» The Citizen s Part in Government , p. 19. 



360 Vital American Problems 

good and to do what is right when the doors of 
opportunity to obtain the necessaries of life are 
closed to them. 

It is asserted as a principle of racial life, growth, 
decay, and death that when an inferior race comes 
into active contact and lives in close association 
with a superior race ultimately the weaker will 
give way to the stronger and decay and death 
will be its final end. The negro and the Caucasian 
races in America live in close contact with each 
other, the Caucasian being admittedly the stronger 
and the negro the weaker of the races; and the 
prophecy is frequently made that no suspension 
of the operation of this racial law will take place 
in America, and that slowly, but persistently, 
the negro race will grow weaker and weaker until 
death will bring extinction. 

Admitting that such a fate is in store for the 
negro race, does that fact excise the making 
of the most earnest, painstaking efforts on the 
part of all Americans to stay the operation of the 
law and to help this people to develop so rapidly 
that strength will take the place of weakness and 
its racial life be prolonged? 

The solution of the negro problem in all its 
various aspects is beginning to be understood, 
and the agencies which in the years to come will 
transform the negro race into a civilized, enlight- 
ened, and moral people are being established 
throughout the land, and are receiving the hearty 



The Negro Problem 361 

support of those who realize and appreciate the 
debt which white Americans owe to the negro 
people for the suffering inflicted upon them in the 
days of the past. 



INDEX 



Actions, 74 

Adams, J. Q., on his mother's 

influence, 271 
Advertisement, 54-57 
Agassiz, Prof. L., on social 

equality, 340 
Agreement, trade, see Unions 
Agriculture, see Negro schools 
Agriculture, Sec'y, on do- 
mestic science, 272, 

273 
Alabama, 

Forbade negroes preach- 
ing, 308 
Prohibited education of 

negro, 206 
Proportion of negroes 

and whites in, 327 
Suffrage qualification, 

325 

American history, see Negro 
schools 

American negro, see Negro 

American Sugar Ref. Co., 
prices of products, 11 

Amidon, Judge C. F., on 
centralization, 41 

Annual examination, see Ex- 
amination 

Annual report, see Reports 
of corporations 

Anthracite Board of Con- 
ciliation, work of, 177, 

178 

Anthracite coal strike, re- 
port on, 1 49-1 51, 160 



Anthracite Strike Commis- 
sion, on liberty of contract, 
188-190 

Apprenticeship system, see 
Negro, manual training 

Arbitration, see Unions 

Architecture and religion, 
280 

Arithmetic, see Negro schools 

Armstrong, Gen. S. C, on 
education of the negro, 
300 

Arts and religion, 280 

Argyll, Duke of, on religious 
instinct, 277, 278 

Asarias, Brother, on religious 
education, 297 

Assets, 

Industrial corporations, 

9 

Railroad corporations, 9 
Valuation of, 74 
Association of employers, see 

Employers 
Atlanta Conference, 

on crime against white 

women, 346, 347 
Report on labor unions 

and negro, 262-265 
Report on occupation 
of college graduates, 

243 

Sixth, report on educa- 
tion, see Negro schools 
Atlanta University, 

Character developed at, 
301 

Date of charter, 241 



363 



3 6 4 



Index 



Atlanta University (Cont.) 
Investigation on effect 
of negro education, 
223, 224 
on need of, 357 
Work of graduate ,323 
Atwater, W. C, on purchas- 
ing foods, 269, 270 
Audit accounts, destruction 

of, 101 
Augustine, Saint, on religious 

instinct, 279 
Australia, arbitration court 

in, 196-200 
Avebury, Lord, on govern- 
ment ownership, 115, 131 

B 

Baker, Wharton, on over- 
capitalization of railroads, 

7 
Baldwin, Prof., on man as a 

social outcome, 319, 320 
Bax, on labor, 208 
Beecher, Miss C, on domestic 

economy, 271 
Beecher, Rev. H. W. 
on education, 215 
on negro enfranchise- 
ment, 329, 330 
Belfield, Dr., on object of 

manual training, 250, 251 
Blackhouse, Judge, on New 

Zealand arbitration laws, 

196, 197 
Blake v. McClung, state con- 
trol of foreign corporations, 

24 
Books, production of, see 

Industrial court 
Boston Elevated Co., tax on, 

138 
Boston, Committee of One 
Hundred on duty of the 
state, 349, 350 

Government ownership 
in, 120, 121 



Boyce, Prof., on Philadelphia 

gas-works, 119 
Brackett, on negro church 

attendance, 307 
Bronson, O. A., on religion 

and morality, 290, 291 
Brooklyn Shipbuilding Co., 

effect of strike at, 154, 

Brooks, Phillips, on "Prin- 
ciples, not men," 321 

Browne, J. C, on time for 
teaching manual training, 
25 1 , 252 

Browning, on ideals, 322 

Bryan, W. J., tariff and 
trusts, 15, 16 

Bryce, James, on intermix- 
ture of races, 339, 340 

Bureau of Corporations, 45- 

5 1 
Bureau of Corporations of 

U.S., 35, 36 

Report of, 43, 44 
Butler Bros. Shoe Co., v. 
U. S. Rubber Co., state 
control of foreign corpora- 
tions, 22, 23 



California v. Central Pacific 
R. R. Co., power of Con- 
gress to charter railroad 
corporations, 29, 30 
Capital and labor, hostility 

between, 178, 179 
Capitalization, 41, 42 
Amidon, Judge, 41 
Roosevelt, President, 

40,41 
Root, Elihu, 39, 40 
Carlyle, Thomas, 

on education, 228, 229 
on health, 235 
on manual training, 252 
Cassilly, Rev. T., on religious 
education, 289, 290 



Index 



365 



Character, end of education, 

300, 301 
Chattanooga Tradesman, in- 
vestigation on effect of 
negro education, 223, 
224 
Chemistry, see Negro schools 
Chicago stock-yards strike, 

losses from, 153 
Child, value of , 2 2 1 , 2 2 2 
China, education in, 252 
Churches, 302-314 

Alabama, forbade ne- 
groes preaching, 308 
Brackett, on negro at- 
tendance at, 307 
Catholic, strength of, 303 
Character and, 313 
Dutton, Supt. S. T., on 
schools and, 303, 304 
Duty of, 313, 314 
Expulsion of negroes 

from, 309 
Georgia on, 307 

Forbade negroes 
preaching, 307 
Laurie, S. S., on teaching 

of, 312 
Maryland on, 307 

Forbade negroes 
preaching, 307 
Members of negro, in 
1859, 309 
in 1903, 310 
Mission of, 302, 313, 314 
Mississippi, forbade ne- 
groes preaching, 307 
Negro, attendance at, 

306, 307 

North Carolina, forbade 

negroes preaching, 307 

Statute on, 306, 307 

Number of, for negroes, 

3 11 
Preachers, education of, 

3 11 
Presbyterian synod, on 
negro, 308, 309 



Protestant, weakness of, 

3°2, 3°3 
Schools and, 303, 304, 

^ 352-355 

Teaching of negro, 311- 

3 X 4 
Theological schools for 
negroes, 310, 311 
Names of, 310, 311 
Students at, 311 
Teachers of, 311 
Virginia, forbade ne- 
groes preaching, 307 
Citizenship, requisites of, 350 
Citizens' Industrial Assn. , 144 
Civil Service, see Government 

ownership 
Clark, V. S., report of, on 
arbitration courts, 198-200 
Closed shop, see Industrial 

court 
Collective bargaining, see 

Unions, trade agreement 
Colleges, see Negro colleges 
Color line, see Social equality 
Colorado miners' strike, cost 

of militia in, 151 
Commerce, 

Clause of U. S. Constitu- 
tion, origin of, 25 
Definition, 25, 26 
Commerce and Labor, De- 
partment of, 35, 36 
Commissioner of corpora- 
tions, see Corporations 
Commons, J. R. 

on trade agreements, 

165, 166 
on higher education, 244 
Competition and natural 
monopolies, 110-113 
and taxation, 78, 79 
Conciliation, Board of, see 

Mediation 
Constitution, see U. S. Con- 
stitution 
Contract, liberty of, 188-190, 
194 



366 



Index 



Cooking, see Negro girls 
Cooley, Prof. C. H., on social 

consciousness, 320, 321 
Corporations, 

Actionsby and against, 74 
Agreement with em- 
ployees, see Unions, 
trade agreement 
Commissioner of, 61-69 
Department of, 35, 36 
Examination of, 61-69, 

„ 135. 136 ■ 
Expenses of, 74, 75 
Federal authority to 
create, 

California v. Cen- 
tral Pacific R. R. 
Co., 29, 30 
Garfield, J. R. , 43 , 44 
Luxton v. North 
River Bridge Co., 

3° 
M'Culloch v. Mary- 
land, 26-29 
Federal charters, 31 
Foreign, 133-137 
"Holding," 82 
Natural monopolies, see 

Monopolies 
Number of, 143 
Power of State over, 
"Paper -Trust" case, 
64 
Profits taxed, 70-74, 84, 

Property taxed locally, 

69, 70 
State control, see State 

control of corporations 
Taxation of, 84-86, 134, 

137, 138 
Ten-year averaging, 137, 

138 

D 

Dalrymple, James, on gov- 
ernment ownership, 127- 
129 



Dance and religion, 280 

Democracy and education, 
214 

Department of Commerce 
and Labor, 35, 36 

Department of Labor, U. S. 
reports of, see Unions 

De Tocqueville, on religion 
in United States, 285 

Dill, J. B., evils of state con- 
trol of corporations, 19, 20 

Directors, liability of, 53, 54 

Discriminations, see Rebates 

Dividends, Mass., Gas and 
Electric Light Co., 90 

Dixon, Mr., on purchase of 
natural monopolies, 113, 
114 

Domestic economy, see Negro 
girls 

Doyle, Rev. A. P., on relig- 
ious education, 298 

Draper, A. S., on education, 
214 

Du Bois, Dr. W. E. B., 
on college graduates, 241 
on negro teachers, 321 
on true end of education, 
301, 302 

Dutton, Supt. S. T., on 
churches and schools, 303, 

304 

E 

Education, religious, 286- 
302 

in American colonies, 
292, 293 

Asarias, Brother, on, 297 

Bronson, O. A., on, 290, 
291 

Cassilly, Rev. F.,on, 289, 
290 

Constitutional Conven- 
tion, action in re, 293 

Doyle, Rev. A. P., on 
298 

Eliot, President, on, 291 



Index 



367 



Education, religious (Cont.) 
Gates, Prof., on, 286, 

287 
Hadley, Dr. A. T., on, 

294, 295 

Harris, Dr. W. T., on, 

295, 296 

Harrison, Frederick, on, 

291 
Irreligious public schools, 

293> 3°4 
Morals vs., 287-295 
Morrison, Prof. E. R., 

299 
for negroes, see Negro 
Ordinance of 1787, on, 

35*. 352 
Pedagogy, definition of, 

293. 2 94 
Public schools and, 293, 

3°4 

and crime, 299, 300 
Secular education, ef- 
fect of, 293 
Spencer, Herbert, on, 

292 
Sunday-schools, 298 
Theories in re y 287, 288 
United States and, 352 
Washington, George, on, 

291 
Webster, Daniel, on, 298 
Wellington, Duke of, on, 

291, 292 
Education, universal, 214- 
229 

Aim of, 350 
Aristocratic conception 

of, 218 
Beecher, Rev. H. W.,on 

216 
Carlyle, Thomas, on, 228, 

229 
Child, value of, 222, 223 
Curry, Dr. J. L. M., on, 

225 
Democracy and, 214 
Development of, 234 



Draper, A. S., on, 222 

Du Bois, Dr. W. E. B., 
on true aim of, 301, 
302 

from economic stand- 
point, 219-222 

Fichte on, 239 

God-given right, a, 238, 

239 
Hugo, Victor, on lack of, 

215 
Ignorance, 215, 216, 356, 

357 
MacAllister, Hon. J., on, 

217 
Macaulay, on 222 
Mann, Horace, on, 220, 

221 
Necessity, a, 222, 223, 

239 
Negro, see Negro 
Page, Walter H., on, 

218 
Political standpoint, 

from, 214-219 
Progressiveness of, 234 
Public opinion, 214, 215 
Roosevelt, President, on 

227, 228 
Rousseau on, 268 
Ruskinon, 258 
Simon, Jules, on, 219 
Social standpoint, from, 

214-219 
United States in, 222 
U. S. Com. of Educa- 
tion, report on, 220, 

23 1 * 233 
Washington, Geo., on, 

227 
Eliot, President, 

on education of teachers, 

243, 244 
on religious education, 

291 
Elkins Law, 34, 35 
Ely, R. T., on income tax, 
77> 78 



3 68 



Index 



Emancipation Proclamation, 

207 
Employers, 

Associations of, 144 
Citizens' Industrial 

Assn., 144 
Equality of Taxation, see Tax 
Examination, annual corpo- 
rate, 61-69, 135, 136 
Expenses of Corporation De- 
partment, 74, 75 



Federal aid for negro edu- 
cation, see Negro, federal 
aid 
Federal control of interstate 
commerce, 24-30 

California v. Central Pa- 
cific R. R. Co., 29 
Elkins Law, 34, 35 
Exercise of, 30-44 
Department of Com- 
merce and Labor, 35, 
36 
Federal Corporations. 31 
Interstate Commerce 

Law, 32 
Luxton v. North River 

Bridge Co., 30 
M'Culloch v. Maryland, 

26-29 
Meat Inspection Law, 3 7, 

38 

Northern Securities case, 

29 
Pure Food Law, 37 
Railway Rate Law, 36 
Sherman Anti -Trust 

Law, ^^ 
Federal power over corpo- 
rations, 24-30 

Garfield, J. R., 43, 44 
Luxton v. North River 

Bridge Co., 30 
M'Culloch v. Maryland, 
26—29 



Fichte on education, 239 
Fisk University, character 
developed at, 301 

on crime against white 

women, 346, 347 
Work of graduate, 323 
Florida, negroes and whites 

in, 27 
Food, Pure, Law, see Pure 
Food Law 

Effect of, on character 
and health, see Negro 
girls 
Selecting, 269, 270 
Fore ign corporations , 133, 

J 37 
Franchise, 

Monroe Co. Sav. Bank 

v. Rochester, 84, 85 
Seligman, Prof. E. R. 

A., 71 
Street railway, see Rail- 
roads, street 
Value of, 70, 71 
Freedmen's Bureau, see 

Negro 
Freight Rate Law, see Rail- 
way Rate Law 
Froebel, 

on manual training, 253 
on time for teaching 
manual training, 251 



"Gambling" in stocks, 80, 

81 
Garfield. J. R., 

on corporate evils, 67 
on Federal power to 
create corporations, 

43» 44 
on publicity, 102, 103 
Gates, Prof., on religious 

education, 286, 287 
Geneva University tablet on 

ideals, 322 
Geometry, see Negro schools 



Index 



3 6 9 



Georgia, 

Forbade negroes preach- 
ing, 3° 7 
Prohibited education of 

negro, 206 
Prohibited negroes erect- 
ing churches, 307 
Proportion of negroes 
and whites in, 327 
Germany, manual training in, 
see Negro, manual training 
Giant corporation, 
Dangers of, 6 
Definition, 4 
Effect of destroying, 17, 

18 
Over-capitalization, 6-8 
Two-fold character, 16- 

18 
Value of, 5 
Gibbon v. Ogden, definition 

of "commerce," 26 
Giddings, Prof., on substitut- 
ing commodities, 1 1 
Gilman, N. C, 

Definition of trade-union, 

i47 

on labor settlements, 167 

on rights of public, 164 

on strikes and lockouts, 

190 

Girls, manual training for, 

see Negro girls 
Glasgow, government owner- 
ship in, see Government 
ownership 
Gloucester Ferry Co. v. 
Penn., definition of "com- 
merce," 26 
Goethe, on religious instinct, 

279 
Government ownership, 

Avebury, Lord, on effect 

of, 115, 131 
in Boston, 120, 121 
Civil Service, 121 
Dalrymple, James, on, 
127, 129 



Glasgow, 129 

in Great Britain, 116- 

118 
Hadley, President, on, 

127 
Keyes, C. M., on, 121, 

122 
Le Rossingol, J. E., on, 

London tramways, 115, 

116 
Loud, G. A., on, 123-125 
in Missouri, 121 
Navy Department, 123- 

125 
in Pennsylvania, 1 21—123 
Pennsylvania Railroad, 

122, 123 
Permanence of, 130 
Philadelphia Gas- Works, 

119, 120 
Private ownership vs., 

131 
Robbins, Hayes, on, 120 
in Switzerland, 118 
Telegraphs in Great Brit- 
ain, 117, 118 
Unprofitableness of, 115, 

118 
Wilson, W. B. on, 122, 
123 
Grant, U. S., on Freedmen's 

Bureau, 208, 209 
Great Britain, government 
ownership in, see Govern- 
ment ownership 
Grimke, A. H., on legal posi- 
tion of colored women, 343, 

344 

H 

Hadley, Dr. A. T., 

on effect of social con- 
tact, 319 

on government owner- 
ship, 127 

on religious education, 
294, 295 



370 



Index 



Hampton Normal and Agri- 
cultural Institute, 

Character development 

at, 301 
on crime against white 

women, 346, 347 
Manual training at, 257 
Hand, Daniel, Educational 
Fund for Colored People, 
see Negro Schools 
Harris, Dr. W. T., on relig- 
ious education, 295, 296 
Harrison, Frederick, on re- 
ligion and morality, 291 
Haywood, Dr., on manual 

training, 261 
Health laws, see Negro Schools 
Hill, J. J., 

on American farms, 236, 

237 

on over-capitalization, 8 

History, see Negro schools 

"Holding" corporations, 82 

Holt, B. W., on trust prices, 

12 
Holt, Mrs. H., on importance 

of homes, 266 
Homer, 

cornerstone of civiliza- 
tion, 266 
Influence of, 267-271 
Hudson, Dr. J. H., on manual 

training, 247 
Hugo, Victor, "Whose Is the 

Fault?" 215 
Humboldt, von W., on 

schools, 351 
Hygiene, see Negro schools 



Ibsen, Henrik, on women, 

266, 267 
Ideals, 3 1 5-323 

Baldwin, Prof., on man 
as a social outcome, 
3 X 9> 3 2 ° 



Brooks, Phillips, on, 321 
Browning, on, 322 
Class of, 318 

Cooley, Prof. C. H., on 
social consciousness, 



320, 321 
Du Bois, Dr. 



B., 



W. E. 

on leaders, 322 
Effect of, 322, 323 
Geneva University, tab- 
let on, 322 
Hadley, Dr. A. T., on, 

3i9 
History, no, 316 
Imitation, 318, 321 
Leaders and, 318, 321 
Necessity of, 322, 323 
Negro, in Africa, 315,316 

in America, 316, 317, 

^ 357 

Public opinion, 320 
U. S. Bureau of Educa- 
tion on negro, 318 
Ignorance, see Education 
Imitation, see Ideals 
Income tax, 

Ely, R. T., 77, 78 
Wells, D. A., 77 
Incorporation tax, 51-53 
Indiana Labor Com., report 

on strikes, 160, 161 
Industrial agreement, see 

Unions, trade agreement 
Industrial Commission, pro- 
portion of assets to capi- 
talization, 7 
Industrial Court, 180-201 
Appeal from, 194, 195 
in Australia, 196-200 
Blackhouse, Judge, on 

196, 197 
Books, production 

181, 182 
Boycott, 184, 185 
Certificate, filing of, 

service of, 181 
Clark, V. S. 
198-200 



of, 



report on, 



Index 



37i 



Industrial Court, (Cont.) 
Closed-shop, 185-190 
Decision of, 192 
Evidence, rules of, 182 
Experts, appointment of 

182 
Fines, liability for, 193 
Interference, 184, 185 
Judges, elected, 180 
term of, 180, 181 
three, 180 
Jurisdiction of, 183-196 
Lockout, 193, 194 
Movable, 180 
National Protective As- 
sociation v. Cummings, 
on open shop, 186, 187 
in New South Wales, 

196, 197 
in New Zealand, 196- 

200 
Open-shop, 185-190 
Picketing, 184, 185 
Powers of, 1 81-196 
Re-opening case, 194, 

195 
Strikes, 193, 194 
Unions, recognition of, 

185, 190 
in Victoria, 196, 197 
Victorian Com., report 

of, 197, 198 
Wages, 190, 191 
Witnesses before, 182 
Industrial education, see 

Negro, manual training 
Interstate commerce, 
in 1 8th Century, 38 
Federal Control, see Fed- 
eral power over cor- 
porations 
Roosevelt, President, on 
Mr. Root's address, 
40, 41 
Root, Elihu, 39, 40 
State control over, see 
State control of cor- 
porations 



Interstate Commerce Law,32, 
33 



Jeanes, Miss Anna T., see 

Negro schools 
Jordan, Prof., on teaching 

agriculture, 237, 238 
Judiciary Committee report 

on corporations, 20 

K 

Keefe, D. J., on strikes, 162, 

163 

Kentucky, excluded negro 

from schools, 206 
Keyes, CM., on government 

ownership, 121, 122 



Labor and capital, hostility 

between, 178, 179 
Laughlin, J. L., tariff and 

combination, 14 
Laurie, S. S., on church in- 
struction, 312 
Le Rossingol, J. E., on pri- 
vate v. government owner- 
ship, 131 
Liability of stockholders and 

directors, 53, 54 
Liberty of contract, 188-190, 
194 
Anthracite Strike Com- 
mission, 188-190 
Mitchell, John, on, 188 
Seligman, E. R. A., 194 
Lincoln, A., 

Emancipation Proclama- 
tion, 207 
on his mother's influ- 
ence, 271 
Literature and religion, 280 
Local taxation, see Tax 
Lockouts, see Unions 



37 2 



Index 



London tramways, unprofit- 
ableness of, 115, 116 
Lottery cases — lottery tickets 
in interstate commerce can 
be prohibited, 49 
Loud, G. A., on Navy De- 
partment, see Government 
ownership 
Louisiana, prohibited edu- 
cation of negroes, 206 
Proportion of negroes 

and whites in, 327 
Suffrage qualification, 

3 2 5 
Lowell, J. R., on democracy, 

333 

Lowry, Gov., on negro work- 
men, 255 

Luxton v. North River Bridge 
Co.. power of Congress to 
create corporations, 30 

Lynching of. negroes, see 
Negro 

M 

MacAllister, Hon. J., on 

education, 217 
Mac Arthur, A., on manual 

training in Europe, 248 
Macaulay on education, 

222 
Mann, Horace, on universal 

education, 220, 221 
Manual training, 244-266 

"Applied knowledge is 

power," 248 
Apprenticeship system, 

244-246 
Belfield, Dr., on, 250, 251 
Browne, J. C, on, 251, 

252 
Carlyle on, 252 
China, lack of, in, 253 
Crime, and, 259, 260 
Education, general, com- 
plement of, 247 
Effect of, 249, 250 



Expensive, not, 260, 261 
in Germany, 246. 247 
Froebel, on, 251-253 
Hampton Normal 

School, 257 
Haywood, Dr., on, 261 
Hudson, Dr. J. H., on, 

247 
Industrial war and , 

359 
Lowry, Gov., on, 255 
Mac Arthur, A., on 

European, 248 
Mass. Com., on, 253, 254 
Need of, 245 
Negro view of, 255, 

256 
Schools for, 257, 258 
Expenses of, 260- 

261 
Made to pay, 261 
Shaler, Prof. N. S., on, 

259 
Skilled workmen, 255 
Slater Fund, 232 
State, duty of, in re, 248 
Time for teaching, 251 
Tuskegee Institute, 257 
Union, attitude toward, 

262-265 
Washington, B. T., on, 

259 
Wickersham, Supt., on, 

247 
Marriage, result of religion, 

280 
Maryland forbade negroes 
preaching, 307 

Prohibited negroes erect- 
ing churches, 307 
Mass. Com., on Manual Train- 
ing, 253, 254 
Mass. Gas and Electric Light 

Com., 89-91 
Mayo, A.D., on negro women, 

344-345 
McCrea, R. C, on tax on cor- 
porate profits, 78 



Index 



373 



M'Culloch v. Maryland, 

Power of Congress to 
create corporations, 
26-28 
on Supremacy of Fed- 
eral over State law, 

5°» 5 1 
on taxing to destroy, 

49, 5° 
Meat Inspection Law, 37, 38 
Mediation, Board of, 

Anthracite Board of Con- 
ciliation, 177, 178 
Appointment of mem- 
bers of, 174, 175 
Benefits from, 176, 177 
Members of, 174 
Power of, 175-177, 179, 

180 
Wright, Dr. C. D., on, 
177, 178 
Merrill, Dr. F. G., on occu- 
pation of negro college 
graduates, 242, 243 
Mill, J. S., on equality of 

taxation, 86 
Miller, Justice S. F., on 

uniform tax, 85 
Mississippi, 

Excluded negro from 

schools, 206 
Forbade negroes preach- 
ing, 3°7 
Proportion of negroes 

and whites in, 327 
Suffrage qualification, 
325 
Missouri, 

Government ownership 

in, 121 
Prohibited education of 
negroes, 206 
Mitchell, John, 

on employee's interest 

in his job, 188 
on strikes, 162 
on trade agreements, 167 
Type of leader, 157 



Monopolies, 

Am. Sugar Ref. Co., 12 
Bryan, W. J., on, 15, 16 
Complete, 9 

Government ownership 
of, see Government 
ownership 
Practical, 9 
Life of, 13 
Report on, 59 
Sherman Anti -Trust 
Law, 33, 34 

Lottery cases on, 49 
Standard Oil Co., 12 

Dividends of, 73 
Tariff and, 13-17 
Tax to destroy, 71, 72 
Monroe Co. Sav. Bank v. 
Rochester, tax on cor- 
porate profits, 84, 85 
Morrison, Prof. E. R., on 
public schools and crime, 
299 
Morrissey, Grand-Master, on 

contract breaking, 158 
Mother, duty of, see Negro 

girls 
Murphy, E. G., on qualifica- 
tion for voting, ^^^ 

N 

National Bank v. U. S. Fed- 
eral tax on State bank- 
notes, 47 

National corporations, see 
Corporations 

National Protective Associa- 
tion v. Cumming, on open 
shop, 186, 187 

Natural monopolies, see Mon- 
opolies 

Navy Department, see Gov- 
ernment ownership. 

Negro, 

in Africa, 315, 316 
Child of nature, 207 
Church, see Churches 



374 



Index 



Negro (Continued) 
Citizenship, 207 
Colleges, 238 
Aim of, 301 
Atlanta University, 
Report on gradu- 
ates of, 243 
for teachers, 244 
Commons, J. R., on 

need of, 244 
Fisk University, grad- 
uates, 242, 243 
Graduates of, 227 
Number of, 241 
Occupation of, 242, 

243 
Over-supply of, 240- 

243 

Names of, 241, 242 

Need of, 238 

Number of, 241, 242 

Over-supply of gradu- 
ates from, 240-243 
Color line, see Social 

equality 
Condition of, 

about 1800, 226 

in 1863, 205 - 207, 
225 

in 1900, 211, 212 
Crimes of, 212 

against white women 

336-338, 345-347 

Remedies for preven- 
tion of, 346, 347 
Deportation of, 210, 

211 
Diseases of, 212 
Education of, 

Alabama, prohibited, 
206 

Armstrong, Gen. S. 
C, on, 300 

Atlanta University in- 
vestigation on, 223, 
224 

Character, end of, 300, 
301 



Chattanooga Trades- 
many investigation 
on, 223, 224 

Desire to obtain, 227 

Effect of, 223-225 

Forbidden by law, 206 

Georgia, prohibited, 
206 

Kentucky, excluded 
from schools, 206 

Louisiana, prohibited, 
206 

Mississippi, excluded 
from schools, 206 

Missouri, prohibited, 
206 

North Carolina, pro- 
hibited, 206 

Roosevelt, President, 
on, 227, 228 

South Carolina, pro- 
hibited, 206 

Southerners' view of, 
223, 224, 228 

Tennessee, excluded 
from schools, 206 

United States and, 

348-355 
Vardaman, Gov. J., 

inaugural on, 223 
Virginia, prohibited, 
206 
Emancipation, Proclam- 
ation, 207 
Effects of, 207, 208 
Farmers, number of, 254, 

255 
Federal aid, 348-355 
Boston Committee on, 

349, 35o 
Citizenship, requi- 

sites of, 350 
Character, 350 
Intelligence, 350 
Responsibility, 350 
Exercise of, 352-355 
Freedmen's Bureau, 
348 



Index 



375 



Negro (Continued) 

Nation's problem, 349 
Negro suffrage, 348, 

349 
Ordinance of 1787, in 

re, 351, 352 
Plan for, 352-355 
U. S., duty of, toward 
negroes, 348, 349 
Power of , 3 50 , 3 5 1 
Religion and, 352 
Freedmen's Bureau, re- 
port on, 208, 209, 
230 
Object of Organiza- 
tion, 348 
Freedom, effects of, 207, 

208 
Girls, manual training 
for, 266-277 
Atwater, W. C, on 
purchasing food, 
269, 270 
Beecher, Miss C, on 

271 
Civil War, prior to, 

273> 274 

after the, 274 

on cooking, 268, 269 

Effect of, 273 

Experiments in, 272 

Food, effect of, on 
health and char- 
acter, 268, 269 
Selecting, 269,2 70 

Holt, Mrs. H., on 
homes, 266 

Home-maker, 266-273 

Home influence, 267, 
268, 270, 271 

Ibsen, Henrik, on wo- 
men, 266, 267 

Mission of women, 
266-273 

Mother, duty of, 267 
Education of, 268 
Influence of, 

Adams, J. C, 271 



Lincoln, A., 271 
Spanish proverb, 
271 
Richards, Mrs. E. H., 

on food, 269 
Rousseau on educa- 
tion, 268 
Secretary of Agricul- 
ture on, 272. 273 
Tuskegee Institute, 

276 
Wage-earner, 266-272 
Washington, B. T., on, 

274, 275 
Wife, duty of, 267 
Grant, U. S., on Freed- 
men's Bureau, 208, 
209 
Home of, 206, 275, 312, 

3*4 
Ideals, see Ideals 
Increase of, 210, 211 
Lincoln, A., 207 
Loyalty of, during war, 

33 6 
Lynching of, 337, 338 

Effect of. 338 
Marriage of, 205 
a National problem, 

349, 35° 
Number of, in 1865, 229 

Census, 210 n. 
Politics, see Politics 
Population of, 210 
Property of, 208, 212 
Pure, 225, 226 
Religion of, 206 

Baptism, effect of, on 

slavery, 305, 306 
Churches, see Churches 
Instinct, 285, 286 
Longing for, 286 
New York statute on, 

3°5> 3° 6 
Superstition and, 285, 

286, 305 
Teaching of, forbidden 

by law, 206, 305 



376 



Index 



Negro (Continued) 

United States, and, 

348-355 
Work and, 312 
Roosevelt, President, on 

judging, 332, S33 
Sargent, Major, on mar- 
ital conditions, 205 n. 
Schools, elementary, 
228-238 
Agriculture in, 236- 

238 
Arithmetic in, 234 
Atlanta Conference, 
Sixth, report on, 

23 2 > 2 33 
Chemistry in, 236 
Cost of, 230, 231, 233 
Double system of, 

229-230 
Freedmen's Bureau, 

report on, 230 
Geometry in, 235, 236 
Hand, Daniel, Edu- 
cational Fund, 232 
Health laws, 235 
History in, 238 
Hygiene in, 234, 235 
Jeanes, Miss Anna T., 

gift for, 232 
Jordan, Prof., on 
teaching agricul- 
ture, 237, 238 
Number of, 230, 231 
Peabody Fund, 231, 

232 
Physics in, 236 
Physiology in, 234, 

235 

Pupils, number of, 
in, 230 

Slater Fund, 232 

South's part in es- 
tablishing, 230, 231 

Spalding, Bishop J. L., 
on, 233 

Teachers, number of 
in, 230 



U. S. Com. of Educa- 
tion on, 230 
Writing in, 234 

Schools, Industrial, see 
Manual training 

Schools, Normal, 
Number of, 231 
Pupils in, 231 

Social equality, see So- 
cial equality 

South's attitude toward, 

359, 3 6 ° 

Teachers, 

Colleges for, 239, 240 
Eliot, President, on 
education of, 243- 
244 
Mission of, 240 
Small, Dr. A. W., on, 

240 
Value of, 240 

Tillman, B. R., on im- 
provement of, 265 

Union, attitude toward, 
262-265 

U. S., duty of, towards, 
348-350 

Voting, 209 

White and, linked to- 
gether, 212 

Women, 274-276 

Legal position of, 343, 

344 
Mayo, A. D., on, 344, 

345 
"New Companies" act, 56, 

57 

New South Wales, arbitra- 
tion court in, 196, 197 

New York Central R. R. 
Co., action against, 10 1, 
102 

New York Statute on bap- 
tism of slave, 305, 306 

New Zealand, arbitration 
court in, 196-200 

Nichol v. Ames, indirect tax, 
48 



Index 



377 



Nicholson, Prof., on equality 

of taxation, 86 
North Carolina, 

Forbade negroes preach- 
ing, 307 
Prohibited education of 

negroes, 206 
Prohibited negroes erect- 
ing churches, 306, 307 
Suffrage qualification, 

325 
Northern Securities case, 
power of Congress over 
interstate commerce, 29 

O 

Open shop, see Industrial 

Court 
Ordinance of 1787 on re- 
ligious education, 351, 352 
Organization tax, 51-53, 134 
Over-capitalization, 6, 7, 8, 
79, 80 

Street railways, see Rail- 
roads, street 



Page, Walter H., on educa- 
tion, 218 

"Paper-Trust" case, power 
of State over corporations. 
64 

Parks. Sam, 

Statement of, 159 
Type of labor leader, 154 

Peabody, George, Fund, see 
Negro schools 

Pedagogy, definition of, 293, 
294 

Pennsylvania, government 
ownership in, 1 21-123 

Pennsylvania Railroad, see 
Government ownership 

Perjury, U. S. Revised Stat- 
utes, 61 



Philadelphia Gas-Works, sec 

Government ownership 
Physics, see Negro schools 
Physiology, see Negro schools 
Plutarch, on Religious in- 
stinct, 278, 279 
Politics, 324-335 

Alabama, proportion of 
negroes and whites in, 
326 

Suffrage qualifica- 
tion, 325 
Florida, proportion of 
negroes and whites in, 

3 2 7 
Georgia, proportion of 
negroes and whites in, 

3 2 .7 
Louisiana, proportion of 
negroes and whites in, 

327 

Suffrage qualifica- 
tion in, 325 
Lowell, J. R., on de- 
mocracy, 333 
Mississippi, proportion of 
negroes and whites in, 
326, 327 

Suffrage qualifica- 
tion, 325 
Necessity of, 330, 331 
Negro, 

Beecher, H. W., on 
enfranchising the, 
329, 330 
Disfranchisement of, 

3 2 5> 326 
Effect of enfranchis- 
ing, 329 
Effect of disfranchise- 
ment, 327 
Mistake to enfran- 
chise, 328 
Object of enfran- 
chising, 328 
Slaughter-house cases, 
on condition of, 328, 
329 



378 



Index 




Politics (Continued) 

Vardaman, J. K., 
enfranchisement of, 

33° 
Unqualifiedness of, 

348, 349 
North Carolina, suffrage 

qualification, 325 
Qualification for, 331 

Education, 331 

Effect of, 331, 332, 
334, 335 

Murphy, E.G., on, 333 

Property, 331 
Social equality and, ^^^, 

334 
South Carolina, effect of, 
326 

Proportion of ne- 
groes and whites 
in, 326 
Suffrage qualifica- 
tion, 325 
Suffrage, meaning of, 331 
Tillman, B. R., on dis- 
franchisement of ne- 
groes, 326 
U. S. Constitution, 
14th Amendment, 324 
15th Amendment, 324 
U. S. v. Reese, on 
1 5 th Amendment, 

3 2 4 
Virginia, suffrage quali- 
fication, 325 
Porter, R. P., on govern- 
ment ownership, 11 5-1 17 
Potential competition, 10-13 
Presbyterian Synod, report 
on religion of negroes, 

3° 8 . 3°9 
Prices, arbitrary, 

Am. Sugar Ref. Co., 12 
Standard Oil Co., 12 
Trust, 12, 13 
Private v. Government own- 
ership, see Government 
ownership 



Profits of corporations, tax 
on, 70-74, 76-78, 136, 

1 37 

McCrea, R. C, 78 
Profits of government own- 
ership, see Government 
ownership. 
Property tax, see Tax, local 
Prospectus, 54-57 

"New Companies" Act, 

56, 57 
Proverb, Spanish, on moth- 
er's influence, 271 
Public, injury to, from strikes 
and lockouts, see Unions, 
strikes 
Public opinion, 

Definition of, 320 
and education, 214, 215 
Public schools, see Education, 

religious. 
Public utilities, see Govern- 
ment ownership 
Publication of reports of 

corporations, 63 
Publicity, effect of, 

Garfield, J. R., 102, 103 
Pure Food Law, 37 

R 

Railroads, 

Audit accounts, destruc- 
tion of, 10 1 
Over-capitalization, 7 
Railroads, street, 

Franchises of, 109 
Over-capitalization, 109, 
no 
Railway Rate Law, 36, 37, 

95-99 

Randolph, Edmund, resolu- 
tion in re interstate com- 
merce. 25 

Ray, Congressman, evils of 
state control of corpora- 
tions, 21 

Reading, see Negro schools 



Index 



379 



Rebates, 95, 97, 98, 100-105 
Garfield, J. R., 102, 

103 
New York Central R. R. 

Co., 101, 102 
Religion, 

Architecture, birth in, 

280 
Argyll, Duke of, on, 277, 

278 
Arts, birth in, 280 
Augustine, Saint, on, 

279 
Dance, birth in, 280 
Definition of, 277 
De Tocqueville, on, 285 
Education in, see Edu- 
cation 
Goethe on, 279 
Home influenced by , 

280 
Ideals, result of, 280 
Influence of, 277-286 
Literature influenced by, 

280 
Marriage, birth in, 280 
Morality inseparable 

from, 287-295 
Natural instinct, 277- 

279 
Negro, 285, 286, 305 
Plutarch on, 278, 279 
Primary instincts, 277- 

279 
Religious education, see 

Education 
Sabatier on, 279 
Sculpture, birth in, 280 
Shea, Justice, on, 284, 

285 
in society, 279, 281 
Spencer, Herbert, on, 

279, 281 
Story, Justice, on, 284 
Superstition and, 286 
Taxation of church prop- 
erty, 285 
Tiele, Prof., on, 278 



Tolstoi, Count, on, 279 
in United States, 281- 

285 
Walter, on, 280, 281 
Reports of corporations, 

Annual, 57-61, 135, 136 

Publication of, 63, 136 

Special, 62, 6^ y 135, 136 

Richards, Mrs. E. H., on 

foods, 269 
Robbins, Hayes, on govern- 
ment ownership in Boston, 
120 
Robinson, Herman, 

Advice to union, 157, 
158 
Roosevelt, President, 

on education, 227, 228 

at Harvard Union, on 

Elihu Root's speech, 

40, 41 

on judging negroes, 332, 

333 
Tariff and trusts, 15 
Root, Elihu, 

on Federal control of 

interstate commerce, 

39> 4o 
on responsibilities of 
citizenship, 358, 359 
Ross, Hon. J., on labor and 

capital, 178, 179 
Rousseau on education, 268 
Ruskin on education, 259 



Sabatier, on religious in- 
stinct, 279 

Salaries, exorbitant, &s 

Sargeant, F. S., type of 
leader, 157 

Sargent, Major, report on 
negro marital relations, 
205 n. 

Schofield, Dr. A. T., on value 
of training, 271, 272 

Schools, see Negro schools 



3 8o 



Index 



Sculpture and religion, 280 

Seligman, Prof. E. R. A., 

on corporate taxation , 

7i 
on liberty of contract, 

194 
on net-receipts tax and 

high salaries, 83 
on value of franchises, 

7 1 
Shaler, Prof. N. S., on 

negro capacity for skilled 

labor, 259 
Shea, C. P., on contract 

breaking, 158 
Shea, Justice, on religion in 

United States, 284, 285 
Shepard, E. M., on secrecy 

in corporate management, 

68, 69 
Sherman Anti-trust Law, 33, 

34 
Shop, open or closed, see 

Industrial Court 
Simon, Jules, on education, 

219 
Slater, John W., Fund, see 

Negro schools 
Slaughter-house cases on 

condition of negroes in 

1865, 328, 329 
Small, Dr. A. W., 

on social equality, 340, 

34i 
on teacher's mission, 
240 
Smith, Adam, four canons 

of taxation, 86-89 
Smith, W. B., on social 

equality, 341, 342 
Social equality, 336-347 
Agassiz, Prof. L., on, 

34o 
Bryce, James, on inter- 
mixture of races, 339, 

.34? 
Civilization's duty in re, 
342, 343 



Color line, 338 

Effect of obliterating, 
338, 342 

Justice of, 338 
Effect of, 338, 342 
Grimke, A. H., on legal 

position of colored 

women, 343, 344 
Laws in re y 343 
Mayo, A. D., on negro 

women, 344, 345 
Meaning of, 337 

Methods of teaching, 

337, 33% 
Men, white, duty of, 344, 

345 
Origin of, 336, 337 
Politics and, 333, 334 
Secret, 343 
Small, Prof. A. W., 340, 

34i 
Smith, W. B., on, 341, 
342 

Social intercourse, 
Definition of, 340 
in the North, 340 

Women, negro, legal po- 
sition of, 343, 344 

Women, white, duty of, 
344-346 
South Carolina, 

Prohibited education of 
negroes, 206 

Proportion of negroes 
and whites in, 327 

Suffrage qualification, 

3 2 5 
South Carolina v. U. S., 
adaptability of Federal 
constitution, 42 
Spalding, Bishop J. L., on 

popular education, 233 
Spencer, Herbert, 

on religious instinct, 279 
on religious education, 

292 
Religion basis of civili- 
zation, 280, 281 



Index 



381 



Standard Oil Co., 
Dividends, 73 
Prices of products, 12 
State control of corporations, 
Doll, J. B., 19, 20 
Evils of, 19-24 
Garfield, J. R., 67 
Judiciary Com. Rept., 20 
Limits of, 

Blake v. McClung, 24 
Butler Bros. Shoe Co. 
v. U. S. Rubber Co., 
22, 23 
Neglect of, 

Roosevelt, President, 

40, 41 
Root, Elihu, 39, 40 
Ray, Congressman, 21 
Stockholders, liability of, 53, 

54 

Story, Justice, on religion 
in United States, 284 

Street railways, see Rail- 
roads 

Strikes, see Unions 

Sunday-schools, see Educa- 
tion, religious 

Superintendent of Corpora- 
tion Department, see Mon- 
opoly 

Switzerland, government 

ownership in, see govern- 
ment ownership 



Table of taxes on corporate 
profits, 70, 136 

Tariff, 

Effect of repealing, 14 
Mother of monopolies, 

13. *5 

President Roosevelt, 15 
Trusts and, 13, 15, 16 
W. J. Bryan, 15, 16 
Tax, 

on corporate profits, 70- 
74, 76-78, 136-138 



McCrea, R. C, 78 
Monroe Co. Sav. Bank v. 

Rochester, 84, 85 
Seligman, Prof E. R. A., 

7i 
on corporations. 84-86 
Equality of, Mill, J, S., 
86 

Nicholson, Prof., 86 
Federal, on State Bank 
notes, 

National Bank v. 

U.S.. 47 
Veazie v, Fenno, 47 
on foreign corporations, 

134, 136, i37 
on income, see Income 

tax 
Indirect, Nichol v. Ames, 

48 
Local, on corporate 
property, 69, 70, 134, 
135 
Organization, see Or- 
ganization 
Smith, Adam, on rules 

for, 86-89 
Uniform, 85 
Taxation and competition, 

78, 79 
Teachers, see Negro teachers 
Telegraphs in Great Britain, 
see Government owner- 
ship 
Ten-year averaging, 137. 

138 

Tennessee excluded negro 
from schools, 206 

Territories, power of Con- 
gress over, California v. 
Central Pacific R. R. Co., 
29, 30 

Theological schools for ne- 
groes, 310, 311 

Thompson, Slason, on losses 
from strikes, 1 51-153 

Tiele. Prof., on religious 
instinct, 278 



3 82 



Index 



Tillman, B. R.. 

on negro characteristics, 

334 

on negro development, 

~° 5 
on negro disfranchise- 
ment, 326 
Trade agreement, see Unions 
Trade unions, see Unions 
Trusts, 

Assets of, 7 

Monopoly, 8 

Origin and development, 

3 . 4 

Over-capitalization, 7, S 
Prices, 13 

Tariff and, 13, 15, 16 
Two-fold problem, 16, 
17, 18 
Tuskegee Institute, 

Character development 



at, 301 




on crime 


against white 


women, 


346, 347 


Domestic 


science at, 


276 




Manual 


training at, 


257 





u 

Uniform tax, see Tax 

Union Pacific R. R. Co. v. 
Ruef, on right of working- 
men to combine, 146 

Unions, trade, 

Accomplishments of, 146, 

147 r 
Aim of, 145 
Arbitration, 

Compulsory, 172, 

1 75 
Mediation, Board of, 

see Mediation 
Voluntary, 172 
Benefits of, 146, 147 
Contract, breaking by, 
158 



Gilman. N. C, 

on definition of, 147 
on labor settlements, 

167 

Leaders, 

Mitchell, John, 157 
Morrissey, Grand- 

master, 158 
Parks, Sam, 154, 159 
Power of, 155-157, 

1 S9 
Robinson, Herman, 

157. 158 

Sargeant, Frank S., 

157 
Shea, C. P., 158 
Lockouts, 

Definition of , 1 73 , 1 74 , 

190 
Gilman, N. C, on, 164 
Illegal, 193, 194 
Loss from, 148, 149 
Number of, 148, 149 
Public, injury to, by, 

159-162 
U. S. Department of 
Labor, report of, 
148, 149 
Wright, Dr. C. D., on, 
148, 149 
Negro, attitude toward 
the, see Negro, manual 
training 
Recognition of, 185, 190 
Strikes, 

Ancient method, 162 
Anthracite coal, re- 
port on, 1 49-1 51, 
160 
Brooklvn Shipbuild- 
ing Co., 154, 155 
Causes of, 155-157 
Chicago stockyard, 

J53 

Colorado miners, re- 
port on, 151 
Definition of, 173, 190 
Gilman, N. C, on, 164 



Index 



383 



Unions (Continued) 

Illegal, 193, 194 
Indiana Labor Com., 
report on, 160, 161 
Keefe, D. J., on, 162, 

163 
Loss from, 148, 149- 

i53> l6 ° 
Mitchell, John, on, 

162 
Number of, 148, 149 
Public, injury to, by, 

159-162 
Thompson, S., losses 

from, 1 51-153 
U. S. Department of 

Labor, report of, 

148, 149 
Wright, Dr. C. D., 

on, 148, 149 
Trade agreement, 165- 

171 
Commons, J. R., on, 

165, 166 
Corporation and em- 
ployees, 1 68-1 7 1 
Definition of, 166 
Mitchell, John, on, 

167 
Penalty for violation 

of, 169-171 
State Law in re, 

168 
Terms of, 1 69-1 71 
in writing, 168, 169 
Union Pacific R. R. Co. 

v. Ruef, 146 
United mine workers, 

145 
U. S. Com. of Education, 
reports of, see Education 
U. S. Constitution, 

Adaptability of, South 

Carolina v. U. S. 42 
to collect taxes, etc., 24 
1st Amendment, 352 
14th Amendment, 324 
15th Amendment, 324 



to make laws, etc., 24 
to regulate commerce, 24 
U. S. Department of Educa- 
tion on negro leadership, 

318 

U. S. Department of Labor, 
reports of, see Unions 

United States, duty of, to- 
ward negro, see negro 
Federal aid. 

United States, education in, 
222 

United States, power of, in 
religion, 352 

United States v. Reese, on 
15th amendment, 324 

United States, religion in, 
280-285 

United mine workers, see 
Unions 

Unprofitableness of govern- 
ment ownership, see Gov- 
ernment ownership 



Valuation of corporate assets, 

74 
Vardaman, J. K., 

on negro education, 223 
on negro enfranchise- 
ment, 330 
Veazie v. Fenno, 

Federal tax on State 

bank-notes, 47 
Power to tax, 48 
Victoria, arbitration court 

in, 196—197 
Victorian Com., report of, 
on arbitration courts, 197, 
198 
Virginia, 

Forbade negroes preach- 
ing, 307 
Prohibited education of 

negroes, 206 
Suffrage qualification, 

3 2 5 



384 



Index 



w 

Wages of workingmen, see 

Industrial Court 
Walking delegate, see Unions, 

leaders 
Walker, Prof., on education 
as an economic factor, 219, 
220 
Walter, on religion and so- 
ciety, 280, 281 
War .Revenue Act, 48 
Washington, Booker T., 

on education for Negro 

Girls, 274-275 
on effect of manual 

training, 259 
on hand and heart 

training,. 357 
Prince of colored race, 

257 

on qualification to win 
respect, 260 



Washington, George, on re- 
ligion and morality, 291 

Webster, Daniel, on religious 
education, 298 

Wellington, Duke of, on 
religious education , 291, 
292 

Wells, D. A., on income tax, 

77 
Wickersham, Supt., on man- 
ual training, 247 
Wisconsin state tax com., 84 
Women, 

Crime against, 336-338 
Mission of, see Negro 
girls 
Workingmen, see Unions 
Wright, Dr. CD., 

on Anthracite Board of 
Conciliation, 177, 178 
on strikes and lockouts, 
148, 149 
Writing, see Negro schools 




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